Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010

Holly Springs faces $177,000 EMS bill

The town will lose more than $177,000 in annual revenue beginning July 1, when Wake County will stop providing complimentary paramedic service to the town.

Since 1998, Wake County has paid the salaries of three paramedics who fill a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week emergency medical service shift in Holly Springs. Total estimated cost for that subsidy is $177,850, the current combined salaries for those 3 positions. Starting July 1, Wake will no longer eat that cost, and is asking the town of Holly Springs to foot the bill.

The decision comes as Wake officials are combing their budget, looking for ways to trim expenses in a year of lower-than-expected revenue.

"With the economy being what it is, it piqued everyone's interest that Holly Springs was getting this kind of deal," said Brent Myers, director of Wake County EMS. "It's an incredible deal."

No other town in the county enjoys that kind of arrangement, Myers said.

When Holly Springs first approached the Wake County Commission in 1998 to request EMS service, the county drafted a one-year letter of agreement that placed a Wake County paramedic aboard a Holly Springs ambulance at no cost to the town.

At the end of 1998, a re-evaluation was to take place, but that never happened.

For nearly 12 consecutive years, the county has paid the salaries of three paramedics in Holly Springs while the town has kept all revenues generated by that emergency service. That was part of a rolling, annual agreement.

Wake County was originally motivated to help in this way because the county, not the town, has a statutory obligation to provide EMS coverage. And in 1998, annual revenue for an EMS unit was only about $45,000.

That same revenue today is $326,929, and Wake County wants a cut of that to help cover its costs in a time of shrinking county budgets. Myers says it costs $18.5 million annually to run Wake County EMS, and that emergency services only generate $11 million in revenues.

The money from Holly Springs would feed directly into the county's general fund and could be used to help bridge the EMS department's financial gap.

Holly Springs is weighing two options presented by Wake County EMS to update their contract with the county.

Myers says that no matter which option the town chooses, the EMS deployment model would stay the same. That model, according to Myers, has provided Holly Springs with better-than-county averages on response times to both emergency and non-emergency calls.

Town leaders plan to weigh their options during a retreat in Pinehurst next month, according to Town Manager Carl Dean.

Under the first option, the county would pay for all costs for a 24-hour EMS unit, and the county would receive all revenues.

Right now, Holly Springs pays for and maintains its own ambulance and pays for three of its own emergency medical technicians.

The three town employees who staff the shift would become county employees, and the county would purchase and maintain the town's ambulance, which was just bought new by the town.

The ambulance would remain with the Holly Springs fire department.

In the second option, Holly Springs would annually reimburse Wake for the salaries of the three county paramedics.

The $149,049 left from the expected annual revenue of the ambulance team would fund the three municipal staffers and ambulance costs.