Barrows talks finance committee, ambulance service

Havre City Council member Brian Barrows spoke Friday about the city government including the city's ambulance service at a meeting of the Pachyderm Club at the Duck Inn.

Barrows, the lead minister at Abundant Life Church who is in his second term on the council representing Ward 2, spent the first portion of the speech talking about his time on the council and why he ran in 2011.

"I felt like I wanted to do something to give back to the city and thought this was a great way to do that," he said.

Barrows serves as chair of the Council's Labor Relations Committee. He is also a member of the Fire and Police Committee and Finance and Claims Committees. 

The Finance and Claims Committee is tasked with advising the city and offering input on how its claims and bills are paid.

Barrows said that some ways the city pays for services has changed. He said one such area was how the city paid for cellphone service for employees whom the city needs to be able to keep in close contact with at any time.

When he first started, Barrows said, departments had many different contracts with various providers. He said that now the contracts are more uniform and mostly with a single company.

Though they can vote on the city's annual budget when it is proposed and offer suggestions, Barrows said that much of the actual crafting of the budget is the work of the mayor, Havre Finance Director and Clerk Doug Kaercher and the heads of the city's multiple departments.

Barrows said he and others on the Council wonder if they should get more involved in the process. He said after the Pachyderm meeting that though they don't want to be involved in every stage, council members might want to sit in on some of the meetings where the budget is crafted.

Barrows is chair of the Labor Relations Committee, which works to settle grievances between the city, employees and public sector unions.

The Havre Firefighters  and their union, The International Association of Firefighters, have filed many grievances against the city, Barrows said.

He said the three committee members must look at disputes from all sides.

"Any time you are on a committee like this, there is a delicate balance," he said.

The Police and Fire Committee used to have a bigger role when it came to contracts and grievances, but that changed years ago, he said.

"We can't say do this, do that, but we can make recommendations," Barrows said.

Last week, a man who lives eight miles outside of the city came before the committee to talk about his bill for the ambulance, Barrows said.

Barrows said that though the committee gave the man advice it does not have authority to do anything about ambulance bills.

He said city residents typically pay $800 to utilize the ambulance services, while those within the service area outside the city pay $1100.  

Barrows said that rates have not increased in about five or six years.

He said that the city is willing to work with people to pay their ambulance bills in installments without interest but, a large number of people don't end up paying.

The ambulance service typically runs at a deficit of between $400,000 and $600,000 a year, Barrows said.

EMT services are typically paid for using fees and city taxes, he said, but the city has reached its limit on how much it can tax and voters would have to approve any increase in taxes that could be used to pay for it.

Many cities use a contract to provide their EMT services, Barrows said, adding that is something he would be willing to consider.

He said that because employees of the fire department also provide EMT service, it could change their pay structure and open up issues surrounding union contracts.

"It would open up a big can of worms, I will just put it that way," Barrows said.

Fellow council member Andrew Brekke, who was also at the meeting, said that because the ambulance service operates in a deficit it would be difficult to find someone who would want to take on those services.