Gentry may pay for ambulance service

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

— Ambulance service was the topic of discussion at a meeting of the fire and finance committees on Dec. 14.

Presented to the Gentry City Councilcommittees was a proposed memorandum of agreement between the city of Siloam Springs and the city of Gentry to provide ambulance service within Gentry in 2012.

The document, currently indiscussion stages and not yet approved by governing bodies of either city, proposes a charge to the city of Gentry of $12,000 for up to 200 calls percontract year. It was unclear whether that call number was limited to transports or to all calls within the city.

Committee members wanted the issue clarified in the memorandum to apply to transports rather than to all calls including no-transport calls.

“The fee is basically to coverthe costs of unpaid transports,” said Gentry Fire Chief Vester Cripps. “It’s because folks don’t pay their (ambulance) bill,” he said, suggesting that the issue wouldn’t be on the table if everyone could and would pay for their own ambulance services.

Alderman Jason Barrett said he preferred a set annual fee so that the amount could be included in the city’s budget each year and not be an uncertain amount. He said he did not want to have the uncertainty of a per-call fee.

Because the number ofcalls per year cannot be determined until the year’s close, using the numbers from two years prior to the year to be billed was suggested as a better way to set an amount - thus the number of calls for 2010 would be used to set the fee for 2012.

A number of minor changes to the memorandum were also suggested, including a removal of mention of Gentry’s ISO rating, which, according to Cripps, is irrelevant and has no bearing on the ambulance service issue. Also suggested was removal of the word “automatically” in regard to Gentry providing fire-protection aid, to leave it as defined in current mutual aid agreements.

All in all, committee members found the proposed memorandummuch more affordable to the city than previous cost estimates.

In other business, the committees briefly reviewed a job description for part-time firefighters to increase daytime coverage at the fire station to have someone on duty between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. seven days per week. The issue of working on holidays was discussed, with the general consensus being that Cripps could require work on holidays as needed.

News, Pages 1 on 12/21/2011