Jefferson County Ambulance Board extends offer to CARE

The Jefferson County Ambulance Board has extended an offer to CARE Ambulance to take over ambulance services in the county.

The county's contract with Midwest Ambulance will expire at the end of September, so the ambulance service hopes to have a new contract in place soon. CARE Ambulance, based in Iowa City, was one of a few entities who submitted a bid to the board. Another entity to submit a bid was the city of Fairfield, which initially added a 40-cent levy to its 2020-2021 budget to cover the upfront costs of running the ambulance service.

However, since learning of the ambulance board's desire to go a different route, the Fairfield City Council later amended its budget and removed the 40-cent levy. Fairfield City Administrator Aaron Kooiker said the reason the city was interested in running the ambulance service was to have it owned by a local entity and to ensure it was staffed by local people. The city would have owned the service, but would have shared costs equally with Jefferson County and the Jefferson County Health Center.

Many months ago, the ambulance board investigated whether it could share an ambulance service with Henry County. However, the board learned that Henry County was not in a position to agree to anything by the Oct. 1 deadline, so there could have been a gap in service between the end of Midwest Ambulance's contract and the start of the new contract.

Lee Dimmitt, a Jefferson County Supervisor who also sits on the ambulance board, said the board wrote in its request for proposal (RFP) that any company that wished to provide service in Jefferson County must put a paramedic on every rig. The RFP also stipulated how much time the ambulance had to respond to an emergency, how often its fleet should be maintained, and many other details.

Dimmitt said that awarding the bid to a private company was not his 'first choice,” because he hoped that Jefferson County could have a publicly-run ambulance service.

'That's not a reflection on CARE,” he was quick to add. 'The public option was my preference, all things being equal. And the city was one of the bidders. But for reasons I cannot go into, all things were not equal.”

Dimmitt said that, because the negotiations took place during a closed session, he is not at liberty to discuss them, only the actions that were taken during the public portion of the meeting.