BENTONVILLE -- Benton County officials voted Monday to seek legislation mandating ambulance be provided to rural areas regardless of funding.

Benton County's Legislative Committee approved an item for inclusion in the county's 2015 legislative packet that would require ambulance service providers to continue service without regard to questions of payment.

"This mandates ambulance providers to provide service to their areas, regardless of financing or what negotiations are going on," Steve Curry, justice of the peace for District 11, said in introducing the measure. We ought to put lives before dollars."

The committee was considering items county officials hope to see enacted into law by the state Legislature during the 2015 regular session. Rep. Dan Douglas, R-Bentonville, was the only state lawmaker at Monday's meeting. Douglas said work on legislation is already being done and the county needs to develop its proposals and send them on to legislators within the next month.

"By September you need to have your items wrapped up if they're going to be included in the legislative package," Douglas said.

Several items discussed by the committee involved rural ambulance service funding. The county has been negotiating with the cities that provide the ambulance service on how they will be reimbursed for calls for service outside the municipalities. The county has agreed to pay the cities about $942,000 this year and the Quorum Court will decide tonight whether to send any funding proposals involving a countywide millage or a fee on rural households on for a vote in November.

At Monday's meeting the justices of the peace also voted to ask that state law be changed to allow a millage in a limited emergency medical services district. The law now requires millage proposals include voters in whole precincts, which would bring city residents into any district using a millage for funding. George Spence, county attorney presented the committee with draft language to amend state law deleting the requirements that such districts be formed using whole precincts. Spence also provided the committee with draft language to allow EMS districts to use property taxes as funding sources in addition to per household fees.

The committee asked Douglas to request an opinion from the state Attorney General's Office on some of the language in the law governing the providing of ambulance services by cities to rural areas. Michele Chiocco, justice of the peace for District 10, has argued the use of the word "or" in one part of the law limits cities to a single source of payments. Chiocco said if the cities are receiving any patient fees they can't seek other funding.

"If they're collecting fees from the patients then they're paid," she said.

"The question you're asking is whether it's proper to read this as 'and,'" Spence said.

The committee discussed several other items of business, including changes to the county's planning and development ordinance regarding cell towers. The panel voted to recommend reducing the setback requirements for cell towers after hearing from several industry representatives who argued the greater restrictions were not needed for safety. The committee voted to keep the requirements for notifying adjacent property owners of proposed cell tower projects.

The panel also discussed a county ordinance that would give sheriff's deputies the option of writing traffic tickets under state law or the county ordinance. Rob Holly, chief deputy with the Sheriff's Office, said the county ordinance would allow deputies to write tickets that would not then appear on driver's records and would also provide a source of revenue for the county. Holly said the Sheriff's Office would not use the ordinance to increase the number of traffic tickets issued.