by Kate Shunney
Morgan County officials have agreed to consider imposing the county’s Ambulance Fee on commercial property owners after 18 years of the fee being paid only by residential property owners.
Seen as a way to contribute to Morgan County’s rising emergency medical system costs, the Morgan County Commission last week voted 3-0 to set a public hearing on the question of developing a commercial Ambulance Fee.
The hearing was set for Wednesday, November 5 at 11:30 a.m. during the Morgan County Commission meeting.
County officials said they might consider setting an evening meeting as well for residents who can’t make it to a weekday session during regular business hours.
Commissioner Sean Forney, who sits on the county’s EMS Board, said the volunteer board had asked him to formally propose the commercial Ambulance Fee. 
The EMS Board favors a fee that would be set at $6 per 100 square feet for commercial properties.
Forney said that preliminary calculations estimate a commercial fee at that level would raise around $135,000 per year for ambulance service.
The county currently collected $1.34 million in Ambulance Fees from residential property owners in the 2024/2025 Fiscal Year. Each occupied residential property unit in Morgan County is charged a $150 annual Ambulance Fee.
That fee was first imposed in 2007 to ensure the availability of advanced life support ambulance service throughout Morgan County. That service now is available around the clock from two stations – one in Berkeley Springs and one in Paw Paw. Residents who use the ambulance service are also charged for any transports they may need.
The County Commission contracts with Morgan County EMS – the county’s previous rescue squad service — to provide EMS coverage. The current contract with Morgan County EMS cost $1,541,854 this year.
Commissioner Joel Tuttle said he’s in favor of the commercial fee to raise more money for the EMS service.
“I have no problem with commercial billing, I just don’t know that square footage is the way to go,” Tuttle said about calculating the fee.
Commissioner Forney said some counties charge businesses the fee in tiers — in classifications of size — while other counties charge the ambulance fee by the number of employees who work at a business or in a commercial building.
“I just think about places with large buildings but fewer employees versus smaller places with more people going in and out,” said Tuttle.
Commissioners said it’s logical that a commercial business with more customer or employee traffic would have a higher need for ambulance service that a large building.
Commissioner Forney said the county already charges the Fire Fee by square footage, so it would be easy to transfer that data to an Ambulance Fee calculator.
“We don’t have a mechanism to calculate the number of employees,” said Forney. The state may have that data, he said.
Tuttle said $100,000 “doesn’t sound like a lot” but bringing that in through a commercial Ambulance Fee would cover the recent shortfall in funding the county had to come up with for their current contract with Morgan County EMS.
“I always had the impression it was a fair thing to do,” Tuttle said of charging commercial property owners an Ambulance Fee that’s already paid by residential property owners.
“If we’re not talking about residential, I’m okay with it,” said Commission President Bill Clark.
Commissioner Forney said if the county chose to charge $4 per 100 square feet, the fee would raise around $90,000 each year.
He said the EMS Board hasn’t yet created a tiered fee schedule to propose. Tuttle said he thought that would be a good option to look at.
“We do have businesses that have 75-80,000 square feet under roof,” Tuttle said.
Under the initial proposal, a commercial Ambulance Fee calculated at $6 per 100 square feet could cost an 80,000-sq.ft. property owner $4,800 per year.
The Morgan County Commission will hold a Public Hearing on the proposed commercial Ambulance Fee on Wednesday, November 5 at 11:30 a.m. in the Morgan County Commission meeting room on the first floor of the county courthouse.
