EDITORIAL: More than ambulance service is on the line

Published 2:00 pm Wednesday, March 30, 2022

The more we learn about the effects of Baker City ceasing its ambulance service, the worse it sounds.

To be clear, the question is not whether ambulances will operate within the city and in more than half the county that’s part of the same ambulance service area.

The issue is who will run the ambulance service in that area.

Under Oregon law, Baker County, not Baker City, is responsible for ambulance service in that area and has the sole authority to pick the provider.

So if the Baker City Fire Department, which has operated ambulances for many decades, ends that service on Sept. 30, 2022, as stated in a notice to the county that the City Council approved March 22, the county would need to find a replacement. That likely would be a private company.

There is, then, no reason for residents to panic that, as of midnight on Oct. 1, six months from now, an ambulance won’t be en route if they have an emergency.

But this is a serious crisis just the same.

Because the issue isn’t limited to ambulances.

If the city does end its ambulance service, the loss of revenue from billing — about $1.1 million in calendar 2021, according to the city — would force the city to lay off about half the fire department staff.

And that could significantly reduce the department’s abilities when called to fight structure fires.

Casey Johnson, president of the local union chapter that represents firefighter/paramedics, said this week that the layoffs would leave the fire department with a standard shift of two firefighters on duty at a time. Johnson said that according to department policy, firefighters can enter a home or other burning structure only if at least two other firefighters are on hand for back up.

That would likely be possible in some cases, as the department, during large fires, has to call in off-duty staff.

But firefighters also take vacations. And they get sick. And with six full-time firefighters available rather than the current 11 (the department is budgeted for 12, and the city has been trying for several months to fill a vacancy), it’s all but certain that the department’s firefighting capabilities would be diminished if the city curtails its ambulance service.

This is not to deny the city’s dire financial straits resulting from operating ambulances. About 80% of the patients the city bills for ambulance service are covered by federal insurance that pays around 20% of the actual cost. The city has offset this shortfall for decades with its general fund — which includes property taxes — but the situation has become more pressing in the past two years, after a federal grant, which the city used to hire three new firefighter/paramedics in 2018, ended. That left the city solely responsible for the higher personnel costs, which have increased from $1.6 million in the 2017-18 fiscal year to slightly more than $2 million for the current fiscal year.

Among the possible solutions to this fiscal dilemma, a levy that increases property taxes both within the city and in the portions of the ambulance service area outside the city limits, is an obvious option. It’s the most stable, long-term strategy, since voters could be asked to approve a permanent tax levy — one that, unlike levies for such services as mosquito and noxious weed control, doesn’t go to voters for reapproval every three or five years.

But there’s probably not enough time to create a new taxing district and take a levy to voters before Sept. 30, the deadline the city set.

Which makes it all the more imperative for city and county officials to figure out how to keep the city in the ambulance business for at least the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. The point here is not to, as the cliché goes, kick the can farther down the road. City and county officials have an obligation to give citizens a chance to decide whether they are willing to pay more to retain a vital service that truly is, at times, a matter of life or death. The city and county can afford to maintain the status quo for another year. The county is receiving $3.1 million and the city $2 million from the federal 2021 American Rescue Plan act. Much of that money should go to businesses and organizations that suffered due to the pandemic, of course. But officials should make every effort to navigate the red tape and use some of those dollars to keep a reliable and trusted ambulance service going, and prevent dramatic cuts in firefighting capacity.

If voters decide they can’t afford to keep that service in the future, then it’s probably inevitable that the city will end ambulance service. But we’re not to that point yet.

—Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor