CC Minutes - 12/07/09 Joint Elected Officials

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In response to a follow-up question from Mayor Leiken, Chief Murphy said “virtually all” ambulance transport services across the country were engaged in this type of conversation. Mayor Leiken believed that the public was mostly unaware that ambulance transport services were experiencing financial difficulty because they believed their taxes were paying for it. He said until the issue resonated with the public, they could be challenged to get this message to the elected representatives in Washington, D.C. unless the United Front could join with American Ambulance Association, the fire chiefs, and the unions and “put a full court press” to stress that Congress needed to take care of the Medica- id/Medicare reimbursement issue. Eugene Councilor Pryor commented that it was “too bad” when a policy discussion had to be driven by money. He observed that at one end of the continuum they had to determine how to prioritize limited resources and at the other end they needed to determine what optimal level of service they should provide and at what cost. He agreed that they should move the fourth and sixth recommendations forward because he felt that it would keep the momentum going. Commissioner Dwyer said they needed to be creative. He suggested that they consider issuing multiple year subscriptions for Fire Med, for one thing. He observed that tax forms had a box to check to give a deduction to the democrats or republicans and suggested that they see if it would be possible to allocate such a deduction to Fire Med. He thought this could be lobbied for at the state level. Councilor Ortiz, seconded by Councilor Clark, moved to approve recommendation Nos. 4 and 6 as is; No. 5 to be approved with the words ‘upon direction of the Eugene City Coun- cil’ added to it; No. 7 worded to indicate that the Joint Elected Officials would work with their respective agencies to use the United Front to educate representatives about and to promote support for long-term stable funding of Medicare reimbursement for ambulance transport. Councilor Ortiz acknowledged that the first recommendation regarding the use of general funds as a short- term funding solution would need to be worked out by the individual jurisdictions. She did not want to leave the meeting without having made any progress, however. She noted that the task force had discussed privatization of the service and determined that it would not be prudent to give up the jobs the cities had and that raising rates was also not an option they wanted to discuss given how expensive it already was. Mayor Piercy suggested, given the time left in the meeting and the length of the agenda, that the JEO say as a group that they believed the seven recommendations were worth pursuing and then refer them back to the individual jurisdictions for their buy-off. Eugene Councilor Brown said they had not discussed the recommendations at a Eugene City Council work session. He could not support the second, third, and fifth recommendation without more exploration. Councilor Clark agreed with Councilor Ortiz – the JEO should move something forward. He reiterated that the task force and staff had spent many dozens of hours studying the options in order to put the recommen- dations forward. He said if they could not approve the recommendations, then the body should move to accept the recommendations. Councilor Taylor felt that the word ‘accept’ was sometimes turned into the word ‘approve.’ She thought MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials—Lane County, Springfield, December 7, 2009 Page 6 & Eugene