By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
The Tucker County Ambulance Authority discussed the results of the recent meeting between local business owners and the Tucker County Commission regarding the implementation of the Special Fee whose proceeds will benefit ambulance service in the County. The discussion came as part of the Ambulance Authority’s December meeting December 17th. Board President Dennis Filler opened the discussion. “Other than going to various meetings and discussions regarding the ordinance, everything seems to be rolling along,” Filler said.
Treasurer Chris Davis said that he felt that the discussion was mostly positive. According to Davis, there was little dissent against the fee and any animosity felt was against how the roll out was perceived. “If you didn’t read the paper, if you didn’t go to the meeting, the reality was, Dennis and I both said there wasn’t a lot of, there was very little, very few people were very negative about the actual fee,” Davis said. “It was more how it was rolled out is just the perception that I took away from it.”
Davis said he didn’t have an opinion on the roll out. “I can’t say one way or another how they did it. They did what they had to do was the way I looked at it.”
Davis said that the crowd was in favor of the fee. Even Tim Price from Timberline, the most vocal advocate against the fee, spoke out and said his concerns were against the roll out, not the fee, Davis said. “But I did not take away from the meeting that there was a lot of, even Tim Price got up and (said) I just want to let you know I’m not against the fee, this is my concerns. So they came with concerns. They came with, hey, how do we handle this? And Dennis, you can correct me if you think so, but I didn’t take away an enormous amount of negativity about the actual fee itself, knowing what it was going for. I didn’t feel that way.”
Filler added that there was no feeling of animosity against the Ambulance service. Filler also said that he felt supported by the public in the meeting for the job that EMS is doing with what they have to work with. “But more importantly, there was almost no animosity at all towards Tucker County EMS,” Filler said. “So in other words, everyone that was there was very supportive of us and the job that we do with the resources that we have.”
Davis said that he felt completely different about the meeting leaving then when he arrived. “We all walked away feeling, ok this is completely different than I expected this to be,” Davis said.
EMS Director Amanda Simmons agreed with the sentiment. She said she was nervous going into the meeting and one point had tears.“One thousand percent,” Simmons said. “ I was so nervous before hand and then to come out.”
Davis said it was about information. According to Davis, the Ambulance Authority were able to answer every question posed to them with reliable data due to hard work by their board and accountant who supplied reliable data to reference. “We’ve all talked, its just getting out the good information,” Davis said. “All the hard work you’ve put in has come in handy. All the data came in handy, every bit of it came in handy. The stuff that Mark gives us on those sheets, we were using it wholeheartedly, percentages, like we had an answer to every question they had because of the data that I know you have put in, the data that Mandy got, making sure the financials are where they are…and all the work that we put in for that meeting, it was fantastic. We had an answer for every question they had.”
Currently, 40% of Billable calls are from out of county residents, according to Tucker County EMS with an overall call percentage of out of county calls closer to 30%.
