HOW WE SEE IT Ambulance Fee Opponents Miss Tax Mark

Let’s say you’re a Benton County resident set to spend a weekend in Branson. Two nights in a hotel, a few meals at area restaurants, a day at an amusement park and another spent pursuing deals at the town’s outlet stores.

At what point do you get a vote on who the town’s next mayor will be?

Is it after you’ve spent $1? Or should it be $1,000? Maybe $250 gets you a vote for an alderman, but $2,500 is necessary for a mayoral ballot?

OK, maybe meddling with the leadership of a city you don’t live in is going too far. How much spending will it take before Branson must chip in some money to pave the Benton County road near your home?

Absurd? Not according to some folks who live in the unincorporated parts of Benton County.

In opposing the Benton County Quorum Court’s proposed $85-per-house annual fee to support ambulance service by cities outside their city limits, some rural residents lay claim to a sort of municipal entitlement on a single basis: We shop there and pay sales taxes, so the city owes us.

Let’s forget for a moment that the cities have, for years, carried the burden of ambulance response to rural areas with no compensation from the county. One could say they’ve gone above and beyond for folks living outside the cities. The cities developed ambulance services to meet the needs of city residents and off ered that service to their neighbors living beyond their borders. But times are changing. The costs of maintaining emergency medical care are growing, the population of people living outside the cities is expanding and calls for service in those secondary areas are more frequent than they used to be. Continuing to donate service to rural areas is harder to justify when it means less capacity to respond within the city. At some point, city leaders have a responsibility to ensure they protect their ability to respond for their residents, not visitors who happen to voluntarily pay a sales tax when they find merchandise they want inside a city.

A key difference between city and non-city residents: There’s not a single tax in Rogers, Bentonville or any of the other towns that residents of unincorporated areas are obligated to pay. They can take their business elsewhere, but residents of those cities pay a multitude of taxes that created and maintain a myriad of city services.

People who want the benefits and responsibilities of city living should move into the city.

Short of that, any extension of those benefi ts to unincorporated areas come through mutual agreement. That’s why county leaders developed this funding source: to pay an agreed amount for a desired benefi t.

Rural voters on Feb. 11 will decide whether they want to provide those additional funds.

If not, it will be up to county leaders to devise another plan, or to force a situation in which some cities will pull their ambulance service back and devote their resources to their city residents’ needs.

This is a problem for county residents and their leaders. It’s not a problem for the cities to solve. If rural areas end up without ambulance service, residents of unincorporated Benton County will have no one to blame - or call - but themselves.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/18/2014

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