05/11/1981 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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. > e e - M I NUT E S Eugene City Council City Council Chamber May 11, 1981 7:30 p.m. COUNCILORS PRESENT: D. W. Hamel, Eric Haws, Mark Lindberg, Gretchen Miller, Brian Obie, Emily Schue, Betty Smith, and Cynthia Wooten. Regular meeting of the City Council of the City of Eugene, Oregon, was called to order by His Honor Mayor Gus Keller. I. UPDATE ON EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES City Manager Micheal Gleason introduced the item. He indicated that the council had performed a real service to the community several months ago by directing staff to prepare emergency plans and by adopting an interim budget to be used in the event that private provision of emergency medical services was terminated. He indicated that because of this forethought, the transition from private to public provision of service had been very smooth. With only two hours' notice, the 1,000-square-mile service area had available a full complement of emergency services. Mr. Gleason indicated that since that time, the City has responded to 58 medical emergencies, 51 of those inside the city limits. He felt that the City was responding from a better deployed station house arrangement than in the past, with an improved communication and dispatch arrangement and good quality service. Mr. Gleason emphasized that this has been a metropolitan solution, with Eugene and Springfield cooperating to provide the service needed in the metro area. Mr. Gleason noted there had been some criticism that the two cities had acted precipitously in switching to the emergency plan. He indicated that he would rather receive this criticism than be criticized for failing to provide adequate emergency service. He felt that criticism would have been much more severe if someone had been seriously injured or had died because adequate emergency service was not available. Mr. Gleason said that the Purchasing Division did an excellent job of acquiring for the City the equipment needed to provide quality emergency service. The City has purchased four ambulances, one new and three formerly used by Medical Services, Inc., (MSI). The average cost per vehicle, equipped and on the road, was about $22,000. Mr. Gleason stated that the cities of Eugene and Springfield are in the emer- gency services business for the foreseeable future. He felt that it was neces- sary to respond to allegations made to the press by a Seattle firm which claimed MINUTES--Eugene City Council May 11, 1981 Page 1