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City Council Meeting <br />Aug. 12. 2002 <br />Page 7 <br /> <br />neither the city nor the county gets the entire cost on their own. All of the <br />expenses are placed in one category, subtract the projected revenue and what <br />is left over is split 60% to the City and 40% to the County. <br /> <br />Councilman McCarthy asked whether when the city adds to the crew that is <br />considered a shortfall. Mr. Klinkerman said yes, and explained that they had <br />enough call volume that they needed a little more capacity, which was about <br />one-half of an ambulance, so the EMS Department had excess capacity. He <br />explained that he tried to staff according to the volume of the calls, you want <br />them to be busy a certain amount because you want them to cover a certain <br />amount of what it cost the city. Mr. Klinkerman explained that someone who <br />is having a heart attack does not want to wait ten minutes for an ambulance to <br />complete another run. They want an ambulance quickly. If you focus only on <br />efficiency, EMS would not have added the extra crew and we would have had <br />people waiting for ambulances and people would be dying. The City Council <br />stepped up and authorized purchasing the ambulance in order to provide good <br />quality ambulance care to all citizens. Over time, Mr. Klinkerman said they <br />expect a growth of three, four or five percent if that trend continues, at some <br />point in time the ambulance will be helping pay for a majority of itself. He <br />said the calls have to gradually come in. They ran 7,061 calls last year, and the <br />projected calls are estimated to be 7,500 to 7,600, which is approximately 6% <br />to 7%. He did not think it would continue to grow because it peaks and valleys <br />a long the way, but at some point in time they will have that situation where <br />they are busy to the point where you will see that the dollar amount will keep <br />coming down. <br /> <br />Mr. Klinkerman called the City Council's attention to the Debit/Credit Report <br />for the EMS that had been included in the agenda packet. Mr. Klinkerman <br />stated that this report reflects activity for the first ten months of the current <br />fiscal year. This report shows a cash credit of what they have received and what <br />was projected to that point in time and the difference between the two. At six <br />months he had received $783,567.67 in revenues and his projection was to <br />collect $662,500.00 and the projected revenues were over by $121,067.67. The <br /> <br /> <br />