Moorpark Issue : Is an independent ambulance service needed?

The city of Moorpark is served by Pruner Ambulance Co. through a contract with the county of Ventura. Some City Council members and residents are unhappy with Pruner’s response time and the lack of full-time paramedics, and have suggested that the city start its own ambulance service, funded by a tax on property owners to be approved by the voters. Should Moorpark taxpayers pay for an independent ambulance service?

Clint Harper

Moorpark city councilman and proponent of the proposed tax

Nobody likes taxes, but this tax is warranted. Saving lives has to be our top priority. Cost has to be secondary, but I don’t want to leave the impression that I’m not aware of the expense of an

independent ambulance service. The $80 a year in taxes is a worst-case scenario under which we would have to hire our own personnel and buy our own equipment. Our first preference, though, is to have the county supply paramedic service through the fire protection district, and we feel from talks with the county that we’ll get cooperation from them. But we decided to pursue the ballot measure so that we could negotiate with the county and get the best possible service for the dollar. I’m ticked off that Ventura County doesn’t see the necessity to supply paramedic service to all of the county. Pruner has a few paramedics at some of their stations, but they don’t cover Moorpark on a regular basis. It’s literally a matter of life and death. Emergency medical technicians cannot supply the same level of life support as a paramedic can. You talk to emergency health people and they say a cardiac patient could be dead in the 10 minutes it takes an ambulance to respond to a call in Moorpark.

Paul Lawrason

Moorpark city councilman and opponent of the proposed tax

The idea of establishing our own ambulance service is not an answer to this point. Ever since I’ve been in office, I’ve been a proponent for fiscal responsibility for elected officials in the city and now we’re

talking about a million-dollar ambulance station for this city. I was absolutely aghast that the committee had not looked at less expensive alternatives and ones that could be put in place much more quickly, but instead rushed forward with a ballot measure for more tax money. Why not find an alternative that works and then if we need the public’s approval to expend tax money, we can ask them. There is the possibility that we could work with the county and their agreement with the current provider to get a station. The provider has tried from the outset to talk to the committee but they’ve refused from the beginning. Also, because of the contract the provider has for our city, there’s a good possibility the city is legally not able to move forward and start their own service. Why go into an agreement like that when there’s a strong possibility the provider and the county might litigate against us? It’s a matter of dollars and cents, of logic. . . .

Steve Murphy

Chief administrative officer, Pruner Ambulance Co. , serving Moorpark

My reaction to the tax proposal is that it’ll cost the taxpayers of Moorpark far more to establish an independent station than it would for us to provide the service for them. It’s ludicrous. There’s no

reason you have to tax the public at a level to provide a new station when a lower tax would help augment existing provider services to get an ambulance stationed there. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We can explore ways to increase services rather than Moorpark building a free-standing service that may not have the depth we can offer. Moorpark should have been discussing this with us from early on, but all of our requests to meet with the committee have fallen on deaf ears. We’re transporting less than 20 people a month at a paramedic level out of Moorpark. Every time a patient has to be transported from the city, that ambulance has to leave the area for a significant time. Are they going to want us to take care of them when their one ambulance is out of town? In our case we can rotate our personnel out of the area to busier stations so that they can maintain their skills. How they’d accomplish that with a free-standing service, I don’t know. It’s past time to start talking.

Joan Bien

Moorpark resident

Recently I was at a local park with my daughter when a neighbor’s baby cracked his head on a rock. I clocked Pruner’s arrival at 15 minutes. The “Golden Hour” for emergency treatment goes by all

too quickly to waste at least one-fourth of it waiting for ambulance attendants to arrive. Pruner Ambulance Co. is contracted by the county to service Moorpark, apparently at its convenience. Despite pleas for better service, there’s still no station in Moorpark and certainly no guarantees of paramedics. Moorpark has exploded to a population nearing 28,000 but the town is still without adequate emergency medical services. An assessed fee of $80 per household seems a small, small price to pay for lifesaving services. When I moved here from the San Fernando Valley I was shocked to discover that emergency medical technicians were not always staffed at the nearby fire station. I guess that I had taken the Los Angeles paramedic system for granted. Placing county-trained paramedics at all fire stations seems logical but since that isn’t happening, a city-owned and run base station is the only safe option.

Barbara Brodfuehrer

Administrator, Ventura County Emergency Medical Services Agency

In 1980, the state developed and enacted legislation that did what Ventura County had already done in the 1970s and that is to establish an Emergency Medical Services Agency (EMSA) system. We feel

Moorpark can’t secede from the county-offered services because of that legislation. the reason we formed the EMSA was that there had been situations where a city had a county provider and wanted to start their own service. There were bitter jurisdictional disputes and the potential for a lot of confusion on who would transport a patient. Our interpretation of the system is that we have the authority and responsibility to provide ambulance service. Moorpark averages less than 30 calls a month. Their call volume is not sufficient to support a private ambulance service. They may have to charge people a lot more money for the service unless, of course, they form an assessment district. A lot of different things could be solved if the city of Moorpark would just sit down and talk with their current ambulance provider.