Lincoln County commissioners have approved the language for a ballot proposition to submit to the people creating an Emergency Medical Service District to provide ambulance services to all county residents.
Their vote came during a special joint meeting this week between them and the Lincoln County Ambulance Advisory Committee.
District 3 County Commissioner Lee Doolen, who is also chairman of the commissioners, said following the meeting he expects commissioners at their July 22 meeting to officially call for the election on the proposition for Nov. 5, placing it on the General Election ballot this fall.
If approved by voters, it would create an Emergency Medical Service District, often referred to as a 522 District, and would be funded by three mills on the dollar of assessed valuation of all taxable property in Lincoln County.
Doolen indicated that theoretically it’s to provide ambulance services for all county residents. “Three mills will create about $1.8 million annually for the county,” he said.
“By law, we can only spend 90 percent of that amount. Ten percent has to go into a reserve fund for the following year,” Doolen stated.
It was pointed out during the joint meeting that one ambulance with paramedics costs $750,000 to operate. “That’s just two ambulances with paramedics,” Doolen noted.
He mentioned, “That if we subsidized the other ambulance services in the county, that might entice other ambulance services to increase their services.”
If the proposition were approved, Doolen explained the three mills would take effect and be collected in December of this year. “We would be able to collect that revenue and at that point it would go through the budget process and be available in October of 2025,” he stated.
He said a county board would be set up by state statute to oversee and serve as administrator of the 522 district.
“If it’s allowed by law, we would have a county commissioner on that board,” Doolen stressed.
He said, “We only have a few ambulances in Lincoln County.”
Doolen thinks rather than purchase an ambulance or two equipped with the paramedics needed, the three mills would be utilized to subsidize all the ambulance services now operating in Lincoln County.
“That might entice communities in the county that don’t currently have a contract with an ambulance service to step up and contract with one that would be subsidized by three mills.”
A couple of points made during this week’s joint meeting is that there were 4,500 calls that ambulance services responded to in 2023. “That equates to a dozen a day,” Doolen stated.
It was said the majority of customers making those calls came from Lincoln County residents.