Rural ambulance mill levy on this year's election

The ballot for this year’s general election will include a vote on whether or not to create a new eight mill levy to support the Havre Ambulance Service and the Rudyard Rural Ambulance Service, which the City of Havre has been subsidizing for many years.

This levy would apply to everyone in the county outside the city limits and Havre Mayor Tim Solomon said it will make up for the shortfall the service has been experiencing, and would allow the service to continue to respond to calls in the county, with six mills going to the Havre Service and two to Rudyard.

“We’ve been absorbing a little more and a little more as calls increase and the cost increases outside the city limits,” Solomon said.

City of Havre Finance and City Clerk Doug Kaercher has said the reason the city has had to subsidize the service is because the county, which accounts for 28 percent of Havre ambulance calls, was paying for about 5 percent of the service.

Havre Fire Chief Mel Paulson said one of the primary reasons for this disparity is because so many people outside the city limits have Medicare or Medicaid, which only pays a certain amount for ambulance service instead of the normal cost.

He said because so many calls outside the city, 70 percent to 80 percent, are on those programs the service tends to see much less income from those areas.

“That’s why raising rates doesn’t seem to help all that much,” he said.

Paulson said the rates the service charges are pretty close to comparable cities and they wouldn’t want to raise the rates anyway.

Solomon said this is an issue he’s tried to bring to the county numerous times over the years via letters to the Hill County Commission, which he said had been ignored.

This year’s letter, sent back in February, said, if the county didn’t respond the city would have to discontinue responding to calls outside the city limits because the service was facing this shortfall and the city couldn’t afford to continue subsidizing it.

“We decided we needed to put a deadline on it so they would at least talk to us,” Solomon said.

Solomon said people on the city level, himself included, have done research trying to find ways to remedy the problem without asking for more tax revenue, but none have proved feasible.

He said he’s spoken with private ambulance services out of Great Falls to see if they would be willing to come up to Havre, but none were willing even if the city were to subsidize them.

Solomon said if the levy gets voted down, the consequences would ultimately depend on the Hill County commissioners’ willingness to discuss further solutions, but the City of Havre is absolutely open for further talks if that happens.

The Hill County commissioners have all indicated that they are open to trying to figure something out if the mills are not passed this year and they don’t want to see service to the county discontinued.

All three said they are hoping the mills do pass and those are conversations that never need to take place.

Hill County Commissioner Diane McLean said she thinks people in the county reasonably expect to have a functioning ambulance service and this levy will make it possible for that service to continue.

“I think, by and large, when you speak to people who live outside of Havre proper, they are confident that when they call 911 and need an ambulance an ambulance will come,” she said. “ … Most people seem to say, ‘Yeah we need an ambulance service.’ They feel that it is a basic service.”

McLean said voting for the levy will make a massive difference to the Rudyard service in particular, which only has one-third of a mill to work with.

“They’ve done an excellent job responding, they’ve done an excellent job working within the dollars that they get,” she said. “But let’s face it one-third of a mill is not much.”

McLean and Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson said these funds would help the Rudyard service, which serves the county west of Kremlin, replace old equipment and pay for the training necessary for responders, all of whom are volunteers.

In meetings with the city, the commission was originally planning to create a county-wide ambulance district that would have put the service in the hands of a board instead of the city, which Solomon and Kaercher said would be a longer-term solution to the problem.

“We went to the commission with that district concept, we didn’t want to go to them and ask them for the money without some kind of solution along with it and that was one of our solutions,” Solomon said.” … It would have been a more long-term solution. Consolidation is always a little better option, in my opinion.”

The district would have involved a county-wide levy of between 15 and 17 mills and would have eliminated the subsidy being paid by the city as well as most of the mills city taxpayers provided to the service at the time.

Peterson said after a meeting with people in Rudyard he felt there was pushback against the idea and the commission shifted course to the current plan of a simple and lower levy.

“There was concern out there by the rural public about being treated fairly by the city,” he said. “It’s a difficult decision to make.”

Solomon, despite preferring the previously proposed district, said the city is not against the new proposal at all, as it does solve the shortfall which was the primary goal of the conversations with the commission.

Peterson said if the levy is voted down, the creation of an ambulance district is still on the table for the future among other avenues the county might pursue in consultation with the city.

All three commissioners and Solomon, Kaercher, Paulson, and Hill County Clerk and Recorder Sue Armstrong said they support this levy and hope that people will vote for it.

“I’m absolutely in favor of it,” Paulson said. “I want to be able to serve the people and I want to serve the people in the county as well I do for people in the city. When someone needs help, someone needs help, and I want to be there for them, and our department and our guys do too.”

Hill County Commissioner Mike Wendland said he hopes that if the public knows what the levy is intended to do, they will see its necessity especially with training costs for responders rising.

“I think if we educate the public about what we are trying to do, try to maintain an ambulance service for everyone in Hill County, hopefully they will approve this proposal that is on the ballot,” he said.

Peterson said if members of the public have questions, they should reach out to the commission.