Hearing set on forming ambulance taxing district

February 7, 2012

Boundary County Commissioners will hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. Tuesday, February 28, in the extension office meeting room, to accept public testimony on whether or not a county-wide taxing district should be formed to maintain and improve ambulance within Boundary County. Under Idaho Code, each county in the state is obligated to provide ambulance service, and since 1965, Boundary County has relied on the Boundary Volunteer Ambulance Association, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, to provide ambulance services, but with new state and federal requirements and increased costs, the organization could be dissolved. As a state-mandated requirement, creating an ambulance taxing district is one of very few, if not the only time in the State of Idaho, that a special taxing district can be formed solely by action of a Board of County Commissioners, without a vote of the citizens required. Not only is the formation of a taxing district at issue, so too is, if such a district is formed, who will provide the service? Commissioners aren't obligated to retain the services of Boundary Volunteer Ambulance, and could choose to enter into a contract with another service provider. According to Chief Ken Baker, Boundary Volunteer Ambulance, manned primarily by 25 volunteer EMTs and eight drivers, respond to an average of 800 calls per year, a number that grows each year as the population ages and more and more tourists travel to and through the area. They operate five ambulances and two rescue units, all of them aging. "Because we're a volunteer service," Baker said, "only a handful of EMTs respond to 90-percent of the calls, as most have to work and can't leave when the pagers go off. When they have to respond to calls in the middle of the night, they still have to get up the next morning and go to work. It's stretching us pretty thin." Currently, BVA recieves $8,000 a year from the county, as well as a small office and space to house two ambulances and one extrication unit. The rest of their funding comes solely from billing ... but only around one-third of the calls they respond to are billable; they're not reimbursed for all the fire calls they respond to, for responding to unknown injury accidents, to non-transport calls or to all the standbys they do at Badger sporting events or the many events organized by other groups, such as the Kootenai River Rodeo, the county fair, the Penguin Plunge. "We're a very community-oriented organization, and our volunteers have always been there when the community needs us," Baker said. "If a district is approved and another service contracted, I don't think they'll be as open to supporting community activities and events." Of the billable responses, he said, only about 60-percent are paid. Current annual costs for the organization run at over $200,000, and current revenues are around $240,000 ... not a very comfortable margin. If the taxing district is approved and BVA chosen to continue providing county ambulance services, Baker said they'll need an estimated $350,000 per year, with which Association plans to aquire land and an ambulance facility of their own, which would be manned around the clock and provide the training room each EMT requires to maintain certification, hire up to three full-time paramedics, and purchase new Advanced Life Support (ALS) equipped ambulances on a rotating cycle, which are required by the state to transport critically ill patients. "Right now, Boundary Volunteer Ambulance, with our Intermediate Life Support capability cannot transport critically ill patients to another facility," Baker said. "A lot of times, weather prevents MedStar from flying in, so we have to bring up a licensed ALS unit from as far away as Spokane to make these critical transports. We want to change that."