The Jacksonville Municipal Ambulance Commission failed to meet quorum for the second straight time on Tuesday morning.
The commission had been reconvened several weeks ago after it was brought to the Jacksonville City Council’s attention that LifeStar Ambulance service was not meeting the 3 fully staffed advanced life support ambulances in service 24 hours/7 days a week as outlined as a requirement in the city’s ambulance ordinance. LifeStar is currently the only service licensed as an emergency response ambulance service to respond to calls within the city. LifeStar Ambulance officials have repeatedly cited the current lack of trained candidates that are licensed to work as EMTs and ALS technicians – citing onerous certification requirements by the state and the ability to attract candidates to the profession for their inability to staff 3 on-call ambulances.
Earlier this year, Echo Ambulance Service received a contract from Jacksonville Memorial Hospital to provide hospital transfer services from Jacksonville to Springfield. Echo Ambulance Owner Danny Kloever told the commission at a previous meeting that his company had been approached by private citizens asking if they would provide emergency services in Jacksonville.
The current municipal ambulance ordinance only allows for one licensed service at this time. Despite the single licensure, members of the ambulance commission and the city’s administration asked Echo Ambulance to submit an application to become a licensed ambulance service for the city.
For the last several months, members of the City of Jacksonville administration have been working on updating the city’s ambulance ordinance to add stronger regulations into the ordinance as well as taking into consideration whether or not to add Echo as a second ambulance service. The need for stronger regulation dates back to when American Ambulance abruptly left the city without proper notice in April 2018.
The commission of 7 members lacked having 4 members present to take action for the second straight meeting. The commission currently has two vacancies, making quorum that much more difficult to reach.
The previous meeting held lengthy discussions between multiple sides on proposed updates to the city’s ordinance, adding a fine and fee structure for ambulance services that fail to meet standards.
City Attorney Attorney Dan Beard said that the present members on Tuesday should work out a time for a new date to hold a legal meeting and refrain from any further discussion. Morgan County ESDA Coordinator and West Central Joint Dispatch Coordinator Phil McCarty said he was out of patience with the matter and refused to take up any more time on getting a legal meeting coordinated by all the parties involved: “It took an unbelievable amount of time just to get here today, and for the city not to have those positions filled…I don’t have that kind of time. No offense and out of respect to everybody else’s time. We have to figure out a better way because this is not okay.”
City Attorney Beard said after the meeting that discussions with the Mayor’s Office on getting the vacancies filled: “The problem is we were only able to have 3 members of the commission here. There are two vacant seats and the others were unavailable at the last moment for this meeting. We will try to get a couple of the vacant seats filled, and then, schedule a meeting as quickly as possible.” Beard confirmed that discussions with Mayor Andy Ezard on the vacancies would take place right after the meeting.
LifeStar President Roger D. Campbell, who was not present at the meeting, said in an email after the agenda was released more than two weeks ago that the commission should “not rush to a judgment that is not in the best interest of all concerned” when it comes to changing the city’s ordinance or even allowing a second ambulance service to operate in competition with one another.
In the meantime, the city is still awaiting a study of ambulance service in Jacksonville and Morgan County. The study is expected to reveal what everyone needs as far as number of ambulances and the current state of emergency services in the county sometime by the end of the summer.