Item D: Eugene Fire & EMS Department Ambulance Service Area Realignment

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supported; instead, the district annually levies funds as necessary to provide all of its services, in effect providing some support to the ambulance service with general tax monies. For FY09 this requirement is estimated to be between $400,000 and $500,000 or approximately one-third of the district’s total revenue. The entire problem will be further exacerbated next calendar year. A temporary increase in the fee schedule provided in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 is scheduled to sunset Decem- ber 31, 2009. Also, for the first time, providers will not be allowed an annual inflationary ad- justment in the fee schedule. The calendar year 2010 impact of these two factors alone is esti- mated at $400,000 for Eugene and $300,000 for Springfield. In February of this year, at the conclusion of a Joint Elected Officials summit regarding this is- sue, the formation of our Task Force was authorized. EXPLANATION OF RECOMMENDATIONS General Fund Support 1. In Eugene and Springfield, since the cities assumed responsibility for providing am- bulance service in 1981, it has been established public policy that the service is to be self-supporting through fees collected (including FireMed membership fees). This, with the benefit of occasional fee increases, was sufficient until the Medicare reimbursement reductions took effect. Facing those reductions, the provider agencies took all steps available to them to con- tinue to provide service on a self-sustaining basis. However, the crisis worsened as Oregon’s Medicaid program enacted similar reductions, as the federal reductions be- came more severe, and as the national economy deteriorated. Lane Rural Fire/Rescue already supplements its ambulance fee and FireMed revenue with general tax revenue as necessary. In Eugene and Springfield, this has been re- quired to a limited extent in recent years, and fiscal projections indicate that the need for General Fund support is escalating at an alarming rate. The elected bodies could choose to make General Fund support the permanent solu- tion to the problem before us. However, the Task Force believes that, for the sake of preserving other local government services to the greatest extent possible, General Fund support should be viewed only as a short-term solution. In the long term, the public will be better served if ambulance and fire services are supported by a combi- nation of fees for service, FireMed membership fees, and some form of dedicated tax support. Fire Department Merger 2. During the time that our Task Force has been studying and deliberating on the ambu- lance funding issue, the Portland consulting firm ESCI was commissioned by the cit- ies of Eugene and Springfield to prepare a report regarding the possible benefits of 4