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Washington Evening Journal
111 North Marion Avenue
Washington, IA 52353
319-653-2191
Letter to the editor
Sep. 17, 2024 3:30 pm
Some thoughts on EMS funding
In response to recent discussions around funding for Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Iowa, I found much food for thought. There are several considerations:
- This is a necessary public service, no doubt about it. The question is about how to fund it, not about whether it is important or necessary.
- Our society today expects an instant response to emergencies. There is a large cost with being ready and available 24-7-365. No private company can provide this service cost-effectively for very long, especially in rural Iowa. Therefore, it seems legitimate that it needs to be publicly funded with some form of taxation.
- Unlike fire protection, which has the protection of property within the county as a large component of its service, the ambulance service is more directly a people service than one of property protection. The EMS doesn’t transport sick houses or sick dirt, it provides transportation for individual people.
- As a people service, this should be funded by a people tax, such as sales tax or income tax across the state of Iowa, not by the property owners of an individual county. The service is about the people, and funding by the state would assure that it is funded by a broad-based tax to provide a service to all people.
- The last session of the legislature cut state income taxes, but at the county level, supervisors are being forced to raise property taxes because of our outdated funding structures.
- We hear much about the importance of affordable housing, and how adverse it is to have high rental rates. But an owner of a rental property is essentially being forced to raise rents to cover the costs of a higher property tax levy, making the problem of affordable rent even more of a barrier to members of the community.
- I served for eight years on the Washington County Board of Supervisors, back in the late ‘80s. The big issue then was the funding of the court systems and mental health, both people services as well. Back then these were funded by local property tax dollars. Now 30 years later, the state is funding them with their broad-based state taxing authority, thereby spreading the costs of them across a broader base of payers.
- The same rationale should apply to EMS funding, and the funding mechanism for this should be through the state, not county property tax levies.
Why should I be writing about this issue? I was born in October 1929, and will turn 95 this fall. My goal in writing this is to keep people’s attention on an issue that should be addressed at a higher level of tax collection. I appreciate the services we have in our county, for them to be sustainable, they need to be supported with state-wide dollars.
I read that if you live to be 95 years old, you are the one survivor in 10,000 people. Just my thoughts here.
The Survivor,
Wilfrid Vittetoe
Washington
