Iron County ambulance battle: Mayors, county commissoners, and sheriffs duke it out

Written by Paul Dail

The announcement by the Iron County Commission in September that they were going to accept proposals for private companies to purchase the Iron County Ambulance Service has been surrounded by controversy. The first Commission meeting following the decision was heavily attended, primarily by members of the Iron County Sheriff’s Office Division of Emergency Medical Services and their family. Complaints ranged from a lack of proper notification of city mayors and council members in the county to concerns that current employees might be let go if the privatization took place.

Most recently, a petition titled “Save the Iron County Ambulance Service” was started by the Iron County Coordinating Council, a group comprised primarily of all the mayors in Iron County. However, Iron County Commissioner Dave Miller said the problems didn’t start with the Iron County Commission. They were simply responding to concerns.

“We’ve never been necessarily against the [ambulance] service being part of the county,” Miller said. “It’s just that we have to ask ourselves what’s going to be the best thing for the community.”

Previous to 2012, the ambulance service was being handled as its own department. A 2003 bond taken out by the county to build the new ambulance station set the department in the red, and they have been operating at a deficit ever since. In 2012, the service was handed over to the Iron County Sheriff’s Office in an attempt to remedy these financial problems as well as operational issues. In 2013, operation of the ambulance service under the Sheriff’s Office added $300,000 to the deficit currently totaling approximately $2.1 million.

Even though The Spectrum reported that Iron County Sheriff Mark Gower has already started implementing some changes to operations which put the ambulance service still within their 2014 budget as of November, Miller said the financial aspect wasn’t the only issue. He cited a lack of communication between the Sheriff’s Office, specifically Emergency Services Lieutenant Jody Edwards, and the Iron County Commission when it came to their seeking input on financial issues and other improprieties within the department.

“We don’t know why we weren’t getting the responses [from Edwards] or why things weren’t being dealt with,” Miller said. “We needed to figure out what was going on, including what was happening in the department. We weren’t getting straight information.”

Miller wasn’t willing to comment on the improprieties, saying that he recognized that there were many great members of personnel on the ambulance service and that he didn’t want to paint the whole service in a negative light.

“I could disclose information which would help justify our decision, but it would potentially throw a lot of people under the bus and cause a lot of collateral damage,” Miller said, “and I don’t want to do that at this point … I like to understand [what’s going on] before we take the position of judgment. It’s a hard position to take, especially when we are the ones getting thrown under the bus.”

Cedar City Mayor Maile Wilson, one of the members of the Iron County Coordinating Council responsible for the “Save the Iron County Ambulance Service” petition, said the commissioners weren’t entirely innocent of being uncommunicative themselves.

“Prior to the petition, each of the individual mayors wrote a letter to the county commissioners,” Wilson said. “Each letter detailed what we currently saw as problems, suggestions for fixing any problems, and also any ideas on fixing the deficit … what we would like to see done.”

Wilson said she was disappointed that even though the county commissioners were in attendance at the next Coordinating Council meeting, she didn’t get any answers.

“There wasn’t any new information offered,” Wilson said. “It was just kind of a recap of everything we already knew … [The Council] wanted some sort of a direction, even down to just stating which options they were looking at.”

Wilson said that one of her concerns regarded oversight, stating that the concern with privatization is that once the licenses were sold, the company could do whatever they wanted. She also said that Gold Cross, one of the companies that submitted a proposal to the commissioners, is already doing the billing for the current ambulance service and that she didn’t know how they expected to do the exact same thing as the county and make money. In addition, she wanted to know what sorts of demands would be asked of cities that didn’t have the budget, staff, or equipment but which may be asked to suddenly help facilitate ambulance services.

“If there’s a better way to deliver the service, to have better response times, lower costs, all of that, I’m a hundred percent in favor,” Wilson said, “but I haven’t been able to get any answers to the questions I’ve asked.”

Wilson said that one thing the commissioners did allude to at the Iron County Coordinating Council meeting was considering a one-year trial period to any of the companies considering purchase of the ambulance service. This prompted the mayors of the Coordinating Council to pen a further letter asking the commissioners to give the sheriff the same opportunity.

“If [the commissioners] are willing to offer that to the private companies with some oversight, why wouldn’t they allow that to the sheriff?” Wilson said. “He took over the ambulance service when they needed someone to take it over, and I’m not sure there was clear cut direction as far as what was expected … Give the sheriff all those things they would offer to a private company, giving a clear direction and giving it a year. Then [at the end of the year] they would have done what the community wants and would know more information on what would or would not be a good thing for our county going forward with a private company or with continued service from the Sheriff’s Office.”

Along the lines of what the community wants, Wilson said the “Save the Iron County Ambulance” petition was started because she and the other mayors had frequently heard from residents raising their concerns and thought they needed a voice that would be heard by the council.

“We had originally been told that a decision would likely be made by the end of the year, so the petition was another avenue for the residents who are continually coming to us … This isn’t just one or two people.”

Commissioner Miller called the petition, “premature,” saying that the Sheriff’s Office hasn’t been taken out of consideration yet, even though three separate proposals have been presented from private companies. With a deadline of Tuesday, Dec. 23, for the private organizations to submit final information to the Iron County Commission, Miller said they are still looking at all the data. He said that while he appreciated that community members wanted to contribute their feedback, they needed to trust the commissioners to make the right decision.

“I’m not interested in replacing one challenge with another new challenge,” he said. “We have to take this whole thing to new level in-house if that’s the best option … If keeping the ambulance service public is the best thing for the community, regardless of having a lot of clamor, that’s the decision I have to make. If it’s not the best decision, even if we have clamor, I’m not going to vote that way. I’m looking at what is the right thing versus what is the popular thing.”

As of Friday, Dec. 26, two of the three companies had sent the required information to the commissioners, however, Miller said he is waiting to find out if the lack of action by the third company was simply a technical issue before he would reveal which company hadn’t sent the information. The next meeting of the Iron County Commissioners is scheduled for Jan. 12.

Sheriff Gower was unavailable for comment, and The Independent didn’t receive any response to a message left for Emergency Services Lieutenant Edwards.