.png)
Don Gronning
NEWPORT — The Newport City Council is still unconvinced a countywide Emergency Medical Services is a good idea. At Tuesday’s council meeting, Sept. 2, the council apparently agreed with a draft bylaw discussion item that said if an EMS District was formed and a tax levy wasn’t put forth and approved by voters, the EMS district would be dissolved in five years.
Newport City Administrator Abby Gribby said she thought it was important to have something built into the bylaws that would dissolve the district.
“If there is just not appetite for (a levy) I think it needs to be written somewhere that it would cease to exist,” Gribi said.
“I agree,” council member Jamie Sears said.
“Two years,” Newport Mayor Keith Campbell said, meaning the EMS district would dissolve in two years if no levy was passed.
“There’s nothing to say they couldn’t dissolve sooner,” council member Nathan Longley said.
Gribi said she was working on the bylaws under protest. While the county commissioners can form an EMS district and fire districts would automatically be a part of a countywide district, cities and town need to opt in if they want to be a part of the EMS district. To receive any benefits of the district, Gribi felt like Newport would have to join.
County commissioners could form a district with a county commission vote, but funding it with a property tax levy would require a two-thirds approval by voters.
Newport has a fire contract with South Pend Oreille Fire and Rescue, which supplies ambulance service to the south end of the county. The city council and mayor think that is enough.
Council member Mark Zorica asked county commissioner Brian Smiley to “open his eyes” as to Smiley’s thinking.
“I have enough experience in this county to know things can change rapidly,” Smiley said, after explaining he didn’t want to force any town or city to be a part if they didn’t want to. “My perspective is 10, 20-year perspectives.”
He said if the fire districts would work together, maybe an EMS district is a moot point.
“But I have yet to see that long term,” he said. “My experience with fire districts, they like to kind of go at it.”
Smiley said that an EMS district would bring economies of scale and reduce some of the overlap and administration between fire districts. An EMS district is an attempt to reduce regional friction between the fire districts. An EMS district could give countywide representation.
Living in the north county affects his view on forming an EMS district, something he said he’s supported for a long time.
“My vision for an EMS district is largely based on the north end of the county,” he said.
He said people in the north end of the county need Advanced Life Support ambulance services.
“It is a two-hour ride anywhere,” he said. He said helicopter ambulance service wasn’t practical for the north end most of the time.
“There’s like 10 days out of the month you can do that,” Smiley said. “In the middle of February when it’s snowing hard, they’re not going to land a helicopter in Metaline Falls. Forget it.”
The options of getting to a hospital in a medical emergency is to drive to Colville, Spokane or Newport.
He said ALS ambulance services has been a game changer up north. Fire District 2 has established a good record in the north county. Smiley said he has yet to run into a north county constituent who doesn’t support the formation of an EMS district.
While acknowledging that he might be wrong about an EMS district, Smiley said he remembers when county commissioner Mike Manus came to Metaline seeking support for an EMS district in 2017 when things were desperate in the south county.
“I also remember when the hospital went bankrupt in Metaline Falls and we had no medical service,” he said. Smiley said if the private sector could do it, it would have done it.
He said people need to look to the future.
“I wonder how our EMS services would handle a catastrophic fire,” Smiley said. He said the area had not had such a fire in 100 years.
Smiley hoped to have a constructive conversation about the EMS district. He said his goal is to establish resiliency and redundancy in Emergency Medical Services and not have them be so fragile.
“Because to me, they are fragile,” he said.
