BENTONVILLE — A pair of cities want Benton County to resolve the rural ambulance service debate, telling county officials 2013 may be the last year they provide service outside their city limits.
Rogers and Springdale have informed Benton County Judge Bob Clinard the county’s current rate of reimbursing cities to provide ambulance service to rural areas of the county is unacceptable beyond this year. Rogers Mayor Greg Hines said his city will limit ambulance service beginning July 1 and end it Jan. 1, 2014, unless the county shows it is willing to meet the city’s minimum level of funding. Hines said he hasn’t signed the county’s proposed reimbursement agreement for 2013 and won’t without some long-term understanding.
“It’s hard for me to enter into any sort of contract or agreement until I see some real, legitimate attempt to get this issue resolved,” Hines said. “We’ve already talked about how we can’t just keep kicking this can down the road. There’s got to be a decision made.”
At A Glance
County Reimbursement
Benton County appropriated $100,000 to reimburse ambulance service providers in 2011, increased that to $150,000 for 2012 and raised the amount again to $300,000 for 2013. The county appropriation is divided among the cities of Rogers, Springdale, Bentonville, Bella Vista, Siloam Springs, Pea Ridge, Gravette and the Northeast Benton County Fire Department, which provides service to members of the organization’s EMS district. Residents of the district pay annual fee for the service. The providers are reimbursed according to the volume of calls they respond to that result in a patient transport.
Source: Staff Report
According to Rogers Fire Chief Tom Jenkins, the city needs at least $317,125 a year to continue responding to ambulance calls outside city limits. Jenkins said the city needs to buy and staff a fourth ambulance to make that possible. There are times when the city has two and sometimes even three ambulances outside the city, Jenkins said, leaving Rogers residents at risk. In a memo to Clinard, Jenkins said Rogers would accept the county’s proposed 2013 funding level of $72,222 only if the county agrees to pay Rogers $209,302 in 2014 and the full amount of $317,125 in 2015. Otherwise, the memo states, the city will limit response outside the city to one ambulance beginning July 1 and end service outside the city effective Jan. 1, 2014.
“We’ve talked about it long enough,” Jenkins said. “We have to raise the urgency of the discussion.”
Springdale Mayor Doug Sprouse said he and his city’s aldermen also have told Clinard the county must increase funding for ambulance service or face an end to the service after 2013. Springdale provides service to areas in Benton County east of Lowell and Bethel Heights. Benton County has proposed a payment to Springdale of about $25,000 for 2013. Sprouse said the city’s costs are around $70,000.
“The City Council approved the 2013 amount knowing it doesn’t fully reimburse us for providing the service,” Sprouse said. “We’ll be sending the county the information they’ve requested. The amount we’ll require will be figured on the same basis as the agreement we’ve had with Washington County for years. We need to be fair to everybody.”
Sprouse said Springdale also serves Lowell and Bethel Heights and the cost to those cities will also mirror the formula used with Washington County. Springdale provides ambulance service to a portion of Washington County along U.S. 412 east and west of the city.
Clinard said he understands the cities are serious in the request for a resolution of the issue. He said he will press the county’s justices of the peace to move forward on the issue.
“It’s not my decision,” Clinard said. “I think they’ll see it as something pressing. I’m going to stress how important it is that we get this resolved before we go into the budget process so we’ll know what it’s going to cost us. We’ve got to come to an understanding with each provider as to what it’s going to cost us. Then we can agree or not agree.
“Whether we go forward with the existing providers or our own system we’ve got to determine what funding method we’re going to use. There’s a lot to be decided in the first seven or eight months of this year. You can’t have a program that we might spend $500,000 or $1 million on and not know how we’re going to pay for it.”
Clinard said if the county decides to pursue a tax or a fee to pay for the service it will require voter approval. County Clerk Tena O’Brien said a special election has to be held on the second Tuesday of a month, meaning the latest date in 2013 is Dec. 9. The ordinance, resolution or authorizing legislation would have to be filed with her office no later than 60 days before the election, pushing the approval date back to no later than Oct. 10, O’Brien said. If the Quorum Court followed its normal procedure or reading such an ordinance at three separate meetings, she said, that process would need to begin no later than the July meeting.
Justice of the Peace Patrick Carr, chairman of the Quorum Court’s Public Safety committee, said he plans to have a meeting to discuss the ambulance service issue in February, after the county has had time to gather information from the providers on their needs. Clinard was approving a letter Friday asking each provider to detail their subsidy requests for 2014, 2015 and 2016, along with the formula they use to reach those figures. Clinard is also asking if the provider intends to bill the county at a higher rate than municipal customers and whether they intend to bill Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance. He is asking the providers to reply with the information by Feb. 8.
“Once we get that data back, we need to be crafting a plan,” Carr said.
Justice of the Peace Tom Allen, chairman of the Quorum Court’s Finance Committee, said the ambulance issue needs to be put a fast track to resolve the issue in a timely manner. He said bypassing the normal process of moving through individual committees and taking it straight to the Committee of the Whole might be worth considering.
“It’s time to get moving,” Allen said.