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The Iowa Falls City Council spent just five and a half minutes Monday evening discussing and voting to create a new ambulance service that will exist within the Iowa Falls Fire Department and whose costs are largely unknown.

In October, the city was contacted by AMR, the private company that has provided ambulance services in Iowa Falls for more than 20 years. Due to recent paramedic resignations and a lack of available staff within the company, the Colorado-based AMR said it would only be able to provide ambulance services through January. That left the city with the need for a replacement ambulance service.

In November, the City Council gave its permission for Mayor Gene Newgaard to form a task force to explore options for a new ambulance service. At the time, City Manager Jody Anderson identified three possible options:

Develop a joint venture between Iowa Falls and Eldora

Develop an Iowa Falls ambulance service

Contract with the City of Eldora to provide ambulance services in Iowa Falls

Anderson told the Council at a Nov. 7 meeting that he thought the first option – a joint venture with Eldora – would be the preferred course of action.

But at the Council’s meeting Monday, Newgaard presented the task force’s recommendation: create a new ambulance service within the fire department to form the Iowa Falls Fire/EMS Department.

Reading a prepared statement, Newgaard said the task force met four times and “discussed and explored all viable options for providing EMS ambulance service for the City of Iowa Falls.”

“After much careful deliberation, the consensus of the members was that Iowa Falls create its own service,” Newgaard read aloud at the meeting. “Eldora keeps its own service and each service operates independently.”

The task force received two proposals:

The City of Eldora proposed providing EMS services to Iowa Falls and the surrounding communities by placing a minimum Basic Life Support (two-person) crew with one ambulance in Iowa Falls. The crew would be supervised by Eldora EMS Director Ryan Sutcliffe. The city proposed an 18-month contract that would cost Iowa Falls $25 per citizen for a total of $130,950 (based on the 2010 Census).

The Iowa Falls Fire Department proposed creation of an EMS ambulance service for Iowa Falls and the surrounding area. The City would hire an EMS director and increase the department’s volunteer and employee limit from 35 people to 60 to accommodate full- and part-time paramedics and EMTs to staff the service. The city would buy ambulances and equipment and use the fire station to house the service.

Newgaard did not explain the decision when he read the statement Monday night, but in an interview Tuesday morning he said there were two main reasons for the task force’s decision.

“The committee got plenty of input from the community that they preferred to go the local route,” Newgaard said. “Also, when the (Iowa Falls) fire department was designed the intention was that an ambulance service would operate out of there.”

The task force, whose meetings were not open to the public - and are not required to be, according to Iowa Code - included Newgaard, Anderson, Fire Chief Scott Eisentrager, Police Chief Wade Harken and Amber Wiese, Travis Woodley and Katie Rieks. Council members also rotated through the meetings, one or two at a time.

Several Eldora representatives were present Monday evening. They were not asked questions, and they did not comment during the meeting. But after the meeting, Aaron Budweg, an Eldora Council member and Eldora EMS employee, said he was “disappointed” by the decision.

“It was interesting to see no questions fielded to the fire department or the people from Eldora,” Budweg said of the meeting. He said he learned of the Iowa Falls Fire Department’s proposal to the task force in the Times Citizen’s daily email newsletter, TC Daily, on Monday morning.

Eldora EMS Director Ryan Sutcliffe also attended the meeting Monday evening. He said he had hoped Iowa Falls would accept Eldora’s offer.

“I think it would have been a good collaboration,” he said after the meeting.

Very few details about the new Iowa Falls EMS service were provided before or during Monday’s city council meeting. In an interview after the meeting, City Manager Jody Anderson said that’s because not all of the details are known. For example, the Council authorized the city to spend up to $1 million on equipment for the new EMS service, but it’s not clear how much of that will be needed. Equipment will be bought using local option sales tax (LOST) money, and then the LOST fund will be repaid when the city sells a general obligation bond this summer. That bond will be repaid using property taxes, but Anderson said it will be structured so taxes will not increase. As past years’ bonds mature and payments on them either decrease or end, payments on the ambulance bond will replace them, keeping property taxes relatively unchanged.

“The plan is to not adversely affect the tax levy,” Anderson said. The levy is the amount of money charged on the valuation of property – houses, businesses, agricultural land, etc. – inside city limits.

Eldora Council approves ambulance purchase The Eldora City Council unanimously approved the purchase of a new ambulance for the City’s …

The Council spent part of that $1 million Monday night, approving the purchase of a new ambulance from Arrow Ambulances in Rock Rapids, Iowa, for $109,000. The vehicle is just a chassis and a box. City officials said it could cost as much as $50,000 to equip it with medical equipment. The Eldora City Council recently approved the purchase of a new ambulance for its crew. The total price tag for the new, fully-equipped vehicle is $198,564.18.

In addition to the cost of the equipment, is the cost of the people who will provide ambulance services. There was no mention at Monday’s meeting of how many people will be hired or at what rate they will be paid. Anderson told the Times Citizen he will begin advertising this week to find an EMS director. Once that person is in place, the city will advertise to hire EMTs and paramedics.

“We’ve had inquiries from four to six local EMTs and have had inquiries from three to six paramedics,” Anderson said.

Initially, Anderson said, money to pay the new employees will come from the City’s general fund reserve, whose balance currently sits at about $600,000. Once the EMS service is up and running, and it is billing for services, Anderson said that revenue will be used to pay employees.

With so many pieces of the Iowa Falls EMS plan still in motion, the city will pay AMR $25,000 to provide ambulance services in town through the end of February. After that, Iowa Falls EMS will take over.