With slash-and-burn budgeting becoming the norm across the United States, you don’t have to look far to find a firehouse or police station fallen on hard times. The trend has some departments getting creative when it comes to securing funding—including one gambit that would use Baltimore’s pumpers for ad space.

The city recently discussed the idea—which may not be profitable enough to gain traction—in the wake of being forced to disband three of the city’s fire companies because of lack of funds, according to an article in the New York Times. While such a ploy might not garner enough funds to save the fire companies, it’s indicative of the lengths municipalities are willing to go to in order to provide services in lean times.

“As I’ve looked at budgets, they get bigger with less support from the federal and state governments,” Baltimore City Council member William Welch, who suggested the plan, told the Times. “And we can’t tax people out of existence…. So you have to create alternatives.”

The advertising alternative isn’t really a new option in stretching government dollars. As the Times points out, public transit has long provided moving billboards and lately even transit stations and fare cards are open to branding. Is a fire truck or a police car all that different than a bus? Many say yes.

“We are bombarded by ads everywhere we go, and these are public spaces meant to be reflective of the values of our society, co-opted by the private sector,” Elizabeth Ben Ishai, the campaign coordinator for Public Citizen’s Commercial Alert project, told the Times.

Even advertising pundits shuddered in 2002, when news agencies reported a new program that would sell $1 cruisers to police departments in exchange for ongoing ad space (whether the program was ever actually implemented is undetermined).

“American society has really gone beyond the pale in turning every part of the environment into ad space,” Michael Maynard, a Temple University journalism, advertising, and PR professor, told the Christian Science Monitor at the time. “There should be some things that are off limits.”

Conflict of interest looms large among the reasons for emergency vehicles to remain ad-free, said Tyngsboro, Massachusetts Police Chief William Mulligan, who opposed a recent maneuver to advertise on his department’s cars.

“People believe law enforcement, when they arrive, should be neutral and detached,” he told Public Radio International. “They should not represent the interests of any one group, whether a business or a social group.”

Regardless of the palatability of ad-sponsored responders, for many municipalities there are precious few options to avoid the dangerous cuts in manpower and equipment demanded by lack of revenue—and many of those are just as unpalatable.

Places like Trenton, New Jersey, and Detroit are threatening to cut jobs so they can then turn around and "save" them using federal SAFER grants. The grants, designed to ensure emergency services are adequately staffed, can’t be used to save jobs, only to shore up gaps in service.

“We would have to put them into layoff status to show distress to qualify for the upcoming SAFER grant,” Trenton Business Administrator Sam Hutchinson told the Times of Trenton. “If we don’t get the grant, we’re in a disastrous situation.”

The same goes for Detroit, which announced the impending layoffs of 164 firefighters—about 20 percent of the force—this week. The city has issued an emergency services cost recovery ordinance that will allow it to recoup the cost of providing services where a responsible party can be identified, such as dealing with downed power lines or extricating people from car crashes.

Still, the uncertainty of grants and the long process of reclaiming emergency costs are enough to make a steady ad revenue stream look like a good, if gaudy, option. And for some advertisers, it might not even be all that gauche, said Jody Berg, of Baltimore-based communication agency, MediaWorks. “It just has to be the right client, and there are a number of industries—education, insurance, healthcare—that could be a perfect fit,” she told Public Radio International. "If you can do it at the same time as helping your community save jobs and save lives, it could be a win-win situation for everybody.”