Ambulance contract for county still in limbo

In number of actual words, Taylor County and Aspirus are close to finalizing a new formal agreement for operation of the county’s ambulance service, but in defining what those words mean they are far apart.

After a lengthy discussion with representatives from Aspirus on Friday morning, members of the county’s law enforcement and emergency services committee voted to table action on a new contract pending additional legal review.

For many years, the county has worked with the local hospital to manage the ambulance service. The county pays a subsidy each year to make up the difference between what was collected in revenues and the ambulance expenses. Faced with the subsidy increasing in recent years and wishing to stabilize the county’s costs, county board members have called for contract provisions capping the county’s subsidy at 45% of the total cost of the ambulance service.

At the March 4 law enforcement committee meeting Jason Keffeler, system director for Aspirus MedEvac asked for the county to clarify what that 45% is of whether it is of budget or actual cost. He noted the budget could be very different than the actual cost.

Committee member Scott Mildbrand, who is the one who proposed including the cap, said his point was to protect the county and that if it was cleaner he would be OK with putting a fixed dollar amount in rather than a percentage.

Committee chairman Lester Lewis disagreed saying that if it was percentage of ambulance budget, the county would have that number when it does its budgeting in the fall since the hospital’s fiscal year starts in July. The risk, he said, is that setting it as a percentage of budget could be more or less than 45% of the actual cost.

At the beginning of the meeting, committee members approved the calendar year 2021 subsidy request from Aspirus of $461,956. This amount translated to about 44.6% of the cost to run the service.

Lewis noted that if the county set a number for the subsidy, for example $400,000, the actual percentage it came out to could vary over a wide range and be either much higher or much lower percentage of the actual cost.

“If you do a percentage of the budget that is a solid number also,” Lewis said, noting the contract as written is ambiguous about which it is.

Keffeler agreed the language was ambiguous and wanted language clarifying if it was budget or actual so that it protects both the county and Aspirus.

Committee member Ray Soper disagreed saying he did not see ambiguity. “I don’t think that is ambiguous in the least,” Soper said, noting that the reduction between budget and actual this year was unusual to see.

“The overwhelming odds are that the reduction is a fluke and that the expenses are going up,” Soper said, noting he would have a hard time voting for additional words to be added unless it was reviewed by the county’s attorney.

The agreement was tabled for that review to take place.

In other business, committee members:

_ Received a report from Emergency Management director Colleen Handrick who said she is continuing to work with COVID-19 items and questioned how she should be handling the costs related to the mileage delivering personal protection equipment as well as water and snacks for the testing sites. She noted those expenses would not fall under her other grant programs and suggested using federal American Rescue Plan Act funds. Finance director Larry Brandl disagreed and noted the amount of paperwork required for what was only a few hundred dollars expense would not be worth it. “For a couple hundred dollars I wouldn’t mess with it,” he said.

_ Received a jail update from sheriff Larry Woebbeking that the county has 27 current inmates with 15 of them from Marathon County. He reported being at a law enforcement convention and seeing scanning devices which would be used by jailers when making rounds or interacting with inmates as a way to record the time and date for record keeping purposes and having it tie directly into the county’s law enforcement record-keeping software. The cost is about $10,000 and if they decided to move forward with it said it could come out of the jail improvement account. “We have learned over the years that documentation is everything,” Lewis said.