Apparently, providing emergency services in Santa Barbara County is complicated. I mean, obviously it is. But for some reason I can’t quite grasp, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors has made it even more complicated in the last six months.
For 50 years, American Medical Response (AMR) has provided emergency medical services to the county. But not all of the county—just most of the county. Cuyama, Vandenberg Village, an UC Santa Barbara weren’t part of that contract for some reason. So Santa Barbara County Fire picked up the slack that AMR left behind.
And now County Fire wants it all. The department believes that it would do a better job than AMR, it would actually serve all of the county with shorter response times, and it deserves the multi-million dollars that come with that contract.
Only it’s not a single contract. It’s three. One for emergency medical calls, one for special events and interfacility medical transport, and one for critical care transfers.
While the County Fire Department applied for all three contracts, AMR stubbornly only applied for one of those contracts—the emergency medical calls.
If you listen to Andy Caldwell from the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture, and Business, the other two contracts don’t bring home the bacon for AMR; in fact, providing those services are actually money-losers. If that’s the case, it makes sense for the for-profit AMR to want to slough those services off its to-do list.
So, why then, if the supervisors broke one contract into three, is 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson disappointed in AMR’s application? He said AMR’s application was incomplete and didn’t explain how the company was planning to response to rural emergency calls, which it hasn’t done in the past.
“I was disappointed you can’t even find the word Cuyama in their application,” Nelson said.
Is rural emergency service response the issue that caused all of this in the first place?
During the Sept. 19 board meeting, he offered to give AMR more time to complete its application even though it seemed an almost certainty that the board is going to give the contracts to County Fire. Why would AMR waste its time?
Why did the county waste its time when it was obvious that County Fire was getting the contracts? Legally, it didn’t have a choice—maybe.
Hopefully it will result in better services. Hopefully it means that rural residents will be treated the same as those who are in closer proximity to area hospitals.
I wish emergency medical service contracts were like cannabis dispensary contracts with the city of Guadalupe, where community benefits are roped into the business licensing process. Nonprofits in that city are about to reap the rewards of having two cannabis dispensaries operating in town: with each donating around $50,000 a year to nonprofits that serve the local community and a percentage of the dispensaries’ gross receipts heading into a public benefit fee.
That sounds like a sweet deal for Guadalupe and it also sounds like Root One and Element 7 believe that local residents will be flocking into their shops to purchase cannabis.
Is the city of Santa Maria paying attention? I’m sure it could use public benefit funds and money for local nonprofits too.
The Canary is all about the public benefit. Send ideas to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 21 – Oct 1, 2023.