Prompt and professional emergency medical aid is a major community asset as well as necessity. In the Wood River Valley, ambulance and paramedic services are exceptional.
However, like other public services, Blaine County's ambulance operations are being hit with higher costs for fuel and personnel. Rather than reduce services to cut costs, the Blaine County Ambulance District is asking voters for the first time in its 22-year history to approve a tax override on May 27 allowing a $3 increase per $100,000 assessed value in the yearly district tax.
By hiking the annual tax by $3, the district would raise an additional $350,000 to meet higher operating costs, as well as replace one ambulance each year as they age.
The district unquestionably is well-managed. An ambulance with a paramedic crew is on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week in Hailey to serve the south end of the county, and another ambulance and crew is in Ketchum to serve the north county. Backup ambulances are swung into action if necessary.
However, in these times when the economy is fragile and taxpayers are inclined to be judicious and studied in their decisions on taxes, the ambulance district and an educational group, Support Adequate Funding for Emergency Response (SAFER), could aid its cause with more detailed information on the consequences to families if the override vote rejects a tax increase.
The district tax funds about 70 percent of the present $1.7 million budget for the district. The remainder is made up in special fees for ambulance use.
So, if the $3 annual tax increase per $100,000 assessed value of a home fails, what would happen thereafter, especially as Blaine County's population increases and spreads out?
Would ambulances be manned by less qualified personnel? Would they be less fully equipped with state-of-the-art life support systems and medications? Would ambulances respond selectively to a narrow lists of only the direst medical emergencies? Would the current fleet of seven ambulances be reduced?
There's plenty of time for the ambulance district to dig out examples of the extraordinary service its crews have rendered over the past two decades to the community. The inverse of those stories of medical skill would be what the valley would lose without adequate funding to maintain modern equipment and highly-trained paramedic personnel ands what sort of service was available in the pre-ambulance era.
Blaine County Disaster Services Coordinator Chuck Turner, a longtime valley resident, remembers.
"You might make it to the hospital in the back of a pickup."
