Study finds concerns with current ambulance agreement

CLINTONVILLE – The Innovation Planning Final Report submitted to the city of Clintonville by Fire & Industrial Response Enterprises, LLC (FIRE) brought to light some concerns regarding the agreement the city has with Clintonville Area Ambulance Service (CAAS).
Diane Rowe, interim city administrator for the city of Clintonville, explained those concerns at a listening session July 9 that was scheduled by the city of Clintonville to obtain input from CAAS member municipalities and the public.
Rowe said the city received $32,500 for the Innovation Planning Grant. The city then contracted with FIRE to do the study. The study reviewed the current emergency response system of the city, including fire and ambulance services.
Rowe said the goals were to develop strategic recommendations for improving efficiency and sustainability, and to evaluate the implementation of strategic recommendations.
She added that the study provided three options for the city to consider. The first option would call for the city to transfer all its ambulance service needs to a different ambulance provider. The second option would be the creation of a joint department of ambulance and fire service with the Clintonville Fire Department. The third option would be for the city to contract with a non-profit or private provider like it currently does.

The study also identified questions and concerns related to the governance, funding, long-term sustainability, and the current CAAS agreement, Rowe said. She added that the agreement between the city of Clintonville and CAAS is from 2001, and does not appear to have been updated “substantially” since that time.
“Those findings and the concerns brought up by that study prompted the city of Clintonville to also look at the original 2001 agreement, and in reviewing that, it also brought up some concerns, where we felt that there needs to be some updates, some negotiations, to bring that contract up to date,” Rowe said. “Twenty-five years is a long time for a contract not to have any changes.”
Rowe said the reason the Clintonville Common Council approved a resolution of Notice to Withdraw from the CAAS agreement was due to that notice being required by July 1 prior to the fiscal year that would obligate the city to be part of the agreement. Without the Notice to Withdraw the agreement would automatically renew on Jan. 1 of the following year.
“The terms were just not acceptable,” Rowe said. “There were things that the city needed to have changed and wanted to discuss, but the timing did not provide for that. We just had to provide the notice to not renew, so really buying us some time to talk about this.”
She added, “The thing I want to stress here is that no decisions have been made about what we’re going to do. The only decision that was made is that the current contract as it is, is not acceptable to the city of Clintonville.”
Concerns
Rowe shared with those in attendance some of the concerns with the current agreement. She said the funding formula “may not reflect the actual services that are provided.” Since the city of Clintonville has the largest population of any of the municipalities in the CAAS agreement, Clintonville provides the largest amount of funding to CAAS. But the city of Clintonville has only one vote on the CAAS commission, just like all the other municipalities in the agreement.
“The voting structure, as it is, is equal across the board for everyone, but cost is population based,” Rowe said.
Liability is also shared equally, which Rowe acknowledged was a “bonus” for Clintonville.
Another concern is the fact that if members of the CAAS agreement withdraw from the agreement, they forfeit all rights to the assets of CAAS that they helped fund, Rowe said.
She added that there also is not a clear process to modify the agreement.
Even though the agreement calls for it to be reviewed annually and municipalities signing it every two years, Rowe said the last copy she could find for Clintonville was signed in 2001.

Options
Moving forward, Rowe said the options available to Clintonville would be to revise the current CAAS agreement, explore having ambulance services in the city through another ambulance provider, or to create an ambulance service in conjunction with the Clintonville Fire Department.
When reviewing its options, Rowe said the city of Clintonville, as well as the other members of the CAAS agreement, should consider service reliability and coverage, capacity for future growth, workforce retention and recruitment, financial sustainability, the Innovation grant eligibility, governance and local control, impact of member withdrawal, and facility and capital requirements.

It should be noted that the ambulance service in the city of Clintonville will not change until Jan. 1, 2027, at the earliest.