How long are you willing to wait for an ambulance if you had a medical emergency?
That is one of the first questions Colusa County residents were asked at a series of community meetings on Measure A, a countywide special sales tax initiative slated for the Nov. 8 ballot.
If passed, Measure A would generate about $2.5 million in additional revenue specifically to fund ground ambulance services.
“Colusa County is precariously close to losing its present ambulance service,” said Sacramento River Fire Protection Chief Jeff Winters, at a community meeting last week in Princeton.
Measure A, which would increase sales taxes generated in Colusa County by .5 percent (5 cents on a $10 purchase), is one of three proposals to increase local revenues. The cities of Colusa and Williams will also have tax measures on the ballot.
As a special tax, the county measure must garner two-thirds voter approval (66 percent) to pass – and would be specifically utilized for emergency ground transportation services only.
Winters said without the funding, the loss of the county’s only ambulance is inevitable, given the financial losses sustained over the past 12 years by Enloe, largely due to inadequate government reimbursements for Medi-Cal and Medicare patients.
Despite reducing services from two full time ambulances just a few years ago to one full time and one part time, to now just one full time ambulance, Enloe continued to operate Colusa’s single Advanced Life Support Unit this year at a $775,000 annual loss – and anticipates a deficit of $816,000 in 2023 if they continue services at all, according to a recent analysis.
“Over the years, their deficit has been going up and their revenues have been going down,” Winters said. “They (Enloe) are at the point where if they don’t receive assistance in their revenues, they are going to have to shut down operations in Colusa County – as well as probably Glenn County.”
Although Colusa County had initially proposed a three-way division of costs, with the cities of Colusa and Williams each paying about a quarter of the ambulance service deficit and the County paying half, that idea quickly fizzled under the weight of general fund inadequacies of their own.
“Colusa County has a $1.7 million deficit they are trying to work out,” Winters said. “There is no general funding available in the county for this.”
Winters said the bottom line is that Colusa County needs a permanent solution to assure there is at least one – preferably two – ground ambulances available in Colusa 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
“We are in desperate need of a reliable and sustainable funding source to provide ground ambulance transport services for our county,” Winters said.
Winters said this November, voters will be asked to decide.
According to the Measure A proposal, a citizen oversight committee will be established to oversee that all revenue raised by the special tax is spent appropriately.
While a few people at the Princeton meeting seemed somewhat dejected at the idea of higher taxes on goods and services during persistently high inflation and likely global rescission, there was no outward opposition from the small rural community that currently sees at least a 20-minute wait time for an ambulance.
Diana Roach, however, was very vocal about her support for the tax measure to fund advanced life support services in an emergency, whether accident, heart attack, or stroke.
“We’re out here in no man’s land,” Roach said. “We rely on our firemen to work on us, work on whatever the situation is until they get outside help. Sooner or later, these guys have to know someone is coming to help them. They’re volunteers. They do this out of the goodness of their hearts…but they got to know help is coming, and an ambulance will be available to transport whoever to the hospital.”
Winters plans several additional meetings in his fire district jurisdiction to get the word out about Measure A.
A meeting at the SRFD station in Colusa will be held tonight at 6:30 PM. A second meeting is planned at the SRFD station in Grimes at 6:30 PM on Oct. 6. Princeton’s second meeting will be held in the Princeton High School cafeteria at 6:30 PM on Oct. 13.
Winters said all Colusa County residents are welcome to attend the meetings regardless of where they live, and community input about the measure is vital.
In addition to local tax measures, voters will be asked on Nov. 8 to consider seven statewide propositions, from abortion to zero emission vehicles – the fewest number of statewide ballot measures on a ballot since 1916. ■