FORT SMITH -- The Sebastian County Quorum Court is calling residents to the polls in August to vote on whether to nearly quadruple the fee they pay on personal property tax bills for emergency medical services each year.
The 13-member Quorum Court unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday referring the proposed fee increase to voters in an Aug. 9 special election.
Sebastian County residents outside Fort Smith and Barling since 1986 have been paying $18 a year that goes to Sebastian County Emergency Medical Services to provide ambulance service. Fort Smith and Barling residents don't pay the fee because their ambulance service is provided by Fort Smith Emergency Medical Services.
County Judge David Hudson estimated that about 14,000 residents pay the ambulance service fee.
The special election ballot will ask voters to increase the $18 service charge by $25 a year over two years. If approved, the charge would increase to $43 next year and to $68 in 2018.
Hudson said the Quorum Court could have passed the increase without an election.
"The Quorum Court preferred to honor the people by giving them the opportunity to speak on the fee adjustment," he said.
The people already spoke out in the general election two years ago when they rejected by a vote of 7,190-3,940 a request to increase the ambulance service fee to $43 a year.
Hudson said he is compelled to try again because the revenue-to-cost gap in the emergency medical services budget is sapping the general fund for the county -- which has its own needs, such as jail improvements.
"That is pushing me to review this fee as a revenue source," he said.
One difference from the 2014 effort to pass a fee increase, Hudson said, is the level of support in the Quorum Court. The entire Quorum Court voted Tuesday in favor of the fee increase and election. In 2014, justices of the peace voted 9-4, with four of the Quorum Court's nine Fort Smith members voting against raising the ambulance service fee.
A memorandum Hudson sent to Quorum Court members last month said the 2016 emergency medical services budget is $1,701,232. The county estimates it will bring in $250,000 from the ambulance service fee. The county estimates it will generate another $525,000 from services billing and $229,646 from a 2 percent share of a countywide sales tax that goes into a capital sinking fund account to replace an ambulance this year.
That leaves $696,586 that must come from the general fund, Hudson's memo said. A $50 fee increase would raise $700,000 annually.
When the ambulance service fee was enacted 30 years ago, Hudson's memo said, the county's emergency medical services consisted of six full-time emergency medical technicians and a budget of $188,278.
This year, the service consists of two full-time crews of 14 certified advanced life-support paramedics and four ambulances. Hudson said the ambulances were high-quality, reliable vehicles.
More advanced equipment and more highly trained personnel cost more money, Hudson said.
"We're operating with a 30-year-old fee and paying 2016 medical prices," said Justice of the Peace Shawn Looper of Huntington.
Even though the requested service-charge increase failed in 2014, the county has to try again for the increase to keep emergency medical services at the best level they can be, Looper said. He said all the money generated by the fee is used only for the ambulance service.
News of the Quorum Court's call for the election Tuesday was just beginning to circulate through the county at week's end. Lavaca Mayor Hugh Hardgrave said he first heard of it Friday when a reporter called him for comment. He said he didn't know enough about the proposal to have formed an opinion.
Greenwood Mayor Doug Kinslow responded Friday to an email asking for comment, saying he supported the fee increase and wished it would have passed two years ago.
He said many of the county's calls for emergency service come from Greenwood and that he believes Greenwood residents would continue to support and help maintain the services Sebastian County provides.
"It should make us all feel a little more comfortable about taking that dreaded but more often life-saving ambulance ride," Kinslow said.
Looper said he hasn't received much feedback from constituents, but the reaction he said he has received so far is that people don't want to pay the higher fees. He said he hoped that if the need for the increase is explained well enough, people will support it.
Hudson said the county will have to gear up for intense education efforts that he compared to a grass-roots political campaign. In addition to county officials, the campaign will involve rural fire companies and the mayors of the nine cities covered by the ambulance service fee. Calling the mayors and fire officials together will be one of the first actions Hudson will take in the campaign, he said.
All nine mayors supported the fee-increase proposal in 2014.
State Desk on 05/23/2016