HOW WE SEE IT Rural Voters Must Heed Warning

Sunday, December 29, 2013

One reason people dial 911 and need an ambulance to respond is they haven’t observed warning signs.

A heart attack reaches crisis proportions weeks after a man begins experiencing chest pains.

A woman suffers a massive stroke after ignoring earlier signs of unusual weakness in her arm or numbness in her face.

Such early warning signs might have produced a better result had they been heeded.

OK, rural residents of Benton County, here’s your chance to pay attention to the warning signs.

Siloam Springs made it clearthat its ambulance service to the unincorporated areas of western Benton County will end Jan. 1, 2015, if the county is unable to provide the subsidy city oftcials say they need.

Siloam Springs oftcials aren’t being mean or heartless. They’re simply making sure the service paid for by city residents is as strong, capable and ready as it can be for those residents. If Benton County provides enough of a subsidy to Siloam Springs, we’re sure oftcials will work to ensure the same level of service for rural customers. But without money, why should anyone expect Siloam Springs or any other ambulance provider to bear the burden of responding to rural areas?

This isn’t the first warning sign. The conversation about rural ambulance subsidies took a more urgent tone in 2010 when Bentonville Mayor Bob McCaslin asked the county to start contributing. His city at the time had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars responding to incidents outside the city.

“It’s time to pony up and work your way into covering that,” he said.

Urgent tone is one thing. Urgent action is another, and there’s been precious little of the latter. This fall, however, the Benton County Quorum Court approved an $85-per-household ambulance fee for households in unincorporated areas. Most ambulances responding to rural areas are operated by cities such as Rogers, Bentonville, Siloam Springs, Pea Ridge, Bella Vista, Springdale and Gentry.

Opponents petitioned to get the Quorum Court’s ambulance fee placed on the ballot. On Feb. 11, rural residents will go to the polls to determine the fate of the $85 fee, which was designed to allow the county to pay $942,000 in 2014 as a subsidy to seven municipal ambulance systems.

Still looking for more warning signs? Potential voters can listen to the prognosis described by Justice of the Peace Kurt Moore:

“They need to be aware their vote really counts and will have real consequences. To me, a lot of it depends on the size of the vote and the margin of the vote. If there’s a fairly large turnout and it’s defeated, I’m going to take that as an indication that the majority of the people don’t want to receive ambulance service, and therefore they will not receive the service.”

Benton County’s rural areas need reliable ambulance services. Voters can ignore the warning signs and believe the cities will, out of the goodness of their hearts, continue to respond. It’s a reality, though, that the economics of emergency health care will force them to make operational decisions.

If you were running a business, would you bend over backwards for nonpaying customers, or the ones who pay?

The truth is, rural residents are going to pay one way or another, either by funding the ambulance services or by seeing the havoc they could have avoided had they paid attention to the warning signs.

Opinion, Pages 10 on 12/29/2013