Clinard To Ask For Fee Vote

Ambulance Money Needed

BENTONVILLE — Benton County Judge Bob Clinard said Tuesday he'll ask the Quorum Court to approve a special election before the end of the year to secure money for rural ambulance service.

“No matter how we choose to provide the service, we’ve got to have the money to pay for it,” Clinard said.

Clinard and other county officials met Tuesday with representatives of the eight fire departments providing ambulance service to the rural areas to discuss how to reimburse the departments in 2014 and beyond.

Benton County has worked four years with the departments on the proper reimbursement to the seven cities — Bella Vista, Bentonville, Gravette, Pea Ridge, Rogers, Siloam Springs and Springdale — and the Northeast Benton County Fire Department.

The cities pointed to a state law prohibiting extending city services outside the city without a mutually acceptable agreement. The law also says cities can't subsidize the service. That raised questions about how to determine the cost of ambulance service. The county agreed to pay $100,000 to the providers in 2011 and increased the annual appropriation to $150,000 in 2012 and $300,000 in 2013.

Earlier this year, the ambulance services gave estimates of their costs and amounts they need from the county. The requests ranged from $10,000 for Bella Vista to $416,422 for Siloam Springs and totaled $1,138,494.

The county has agreed to six of the eight requests with Pea Ridge and NEBCO to be discussed by the Quorum Court’s Finance Committee on Aug. 6. Pea Ridge is upgrading its ambulance service to advanced life support, which provides more medical treatment to patients.

NEBCO’s request was put on hold until the outcome of a July 9 election. NEBCO obtained voter approval to increase its annual fee from $40 to $100. The additional money will begin to come in next year, NEBCO Chief Rob Taylor said Tuesday.

Siloam Springs agreed to reduce its 2014 request to about $391,000 contingent upon reaching some mutually acceptable formula for reimbursements beyond 2014 before the end of this year. Tuesday’s meeting was part of the talks about the funding formula. The group discussed a model based on the Central EMS operation in Washington County where the county and cities pay the service on a per capita basis.

Marshal Watson, county public safety administrator, said paying ambulance providers at a rate of $35 per capita will cost about $1.5 million. Clinard said this formula, and any other formula that covers all providers, is likely to increase the cost to the county and he would prefer to work with each of city individually.

“I have no problems working with any of you,” Clinard said. “I think we can do this every year without it being a problem. There is no magic bullet.”

Chief Tom Jenkins of the Rogers Fire Department said he agreed there's probably no single formula to determine costs and reimbursements for all of the departments.

“There are too many variables,” Jenkins said. “I don’t know that we’ll ever agree to one.”

Sarah Daniels, county comptroller, said a suggested ambulance service fee could be set to cover the county’s cost under the per capita formula or the individual requests.

“A fee of $80 per household would bring in enough to pay the current requests,” Daniels said.

Clinard said the county needs to start work on establishing a revenue source for the ambulance service.

“I’m going to suggest to the Quorum Court that we go ahead and have the election,” Clinard said.

Kim Dennison, county election coordinator, said the county could still schedule an election for 2013, but there is a narrow window. Dennison said the county would have to finalize the election at least 60 days before the proposed date.

Kurt Moore, justice of the peace for District 13, said a December election was “doable” but anything earlier was unlikely. Moore said the county will need to make sure voters are offered a proposal in which the annual fee is the only charge they would have if they need an ambulance. Several of the fire chiefs said Tuesday they would have to bill residents for any call.

“We don’t do that for our own residents,” Chief Mike Irwin of the Springdale Fire Department said. “We bill them, and we can’t treat county residents any different than we do our own citizens.”

“I don’t have a problem with them billing insurance or other payers, but I have a problem with them saying they will bill the residents if they approved this fee,” Moore said. “That would need to be settled in advance. For this thing to pass, I would think that would have to be the case. You’d be cutting your own throat if you don’t.”

Kara Funk, president of the NEBCO board, agreed with Moore a proposal that leaves county residents open to being billed in addition to paying an annual fee will be difficult to sell to voters.

“Put yourself in the position of someone who is currently receiving the service for free,” Funk said. “They may be inclined to vote against any increase. We ran into some of those in our election. It’s going to be tough to pass it.”

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