by Kate Shunney
After two public hearings and recurring discussions over the last several months, Morgan County Commissioners have decided to amend the county’s ambulance fee ordinance to apply the fee to commercial properties.
They’ll hold another public hearing about the specifics of the change in the new year, then vote on whether to put the fee in place.
The ambulance fee, which was passed by the county in 2007, is billed to residential property owners each year at a rate of $150 per residential unit. It was originally set at $75 but has risen over the years.
Commercial property owners are not charged the fee.
Members of the county’s EMS Board have been discussing ways to raise more money to cover an annual contract with Morgan County EMS, Inc. to provide 24/7 ambulance coverage to all of Morgan County. The company, formed from the volunteer Morgan County Rescue Service, provides equipment and personnel to respond to ambulance calls for the county.
Morgan County EMS’s last annual contract was renewed at a cost of $1.54 million. The county collected $1.34 million in ambulance fee revenue in the 2024/2025 Fiscal Year.
Applying the ambulance fee to commercial properties is one way for the county to make up the difference, said county officials.
They estimate the commercial fee could generate upwards of $110,000 per year of additional revenue, if the fee is calculated by the square footage of commercial space. That’s how the county’s Fire Fee is calculated, so the county has that square footage data.
Commissioner Sean Forney, who sits on the EMS Board and has brought the commercial fee to the County Commission for action, said last Wednesday, December 17 that he has met with county attorney Richard Gay to get guidance on the next steps to implement a commercial ambulance fee.
Forney said this will be the fifth time the Ambulance Fee ordinance has been amended since it was put in place.
Commission President Bill Clark said he knows the county has to “do something” to increase the fee revenue to meet higher costs for the ambulance service contract.
“I have a little bit of heartache about the method,” Clark said, of calculating the fee based on the square footage of a commercial building. He said he knows there will be instances where that is not the fairest way to apply the fee. Clark asked that the EMS Board continue to look at alternative methods to calculate the fee for commercial property owners.
Commissioners voted 3-0 in favor of asking Richard Gay to draft an amendment to the ambulance fee ordinance to include non-residential billing and to set a future public hearing on that amendment once it is completed.
In related business, commissioners agreed to have Mr. Gay write a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) seeking parties interested in bidding for the county’s ambulance service contract. The RFQ would make it possible for county officials to directly negotiate with qualified medical care providers to weigh their services and prices.
Commissioners previously expressed a desire to make sure the current EMS contract is competitive before they implemented a new fee or raised the current residential fee.
