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Officials and the board overseeing the Indian Lake Joint Ambulance District have made plain in recent weeks their belief that the long-term solvency of the EMS agency is at stake with the passage or failure of a levy for additional operating expenses.
Tuesday, voters will determine whether the previously-floundering agency has cleaned up its act enough to approve an additional levy for operating expenses.
The five-year, three-mill levy question would cost a $100,000 property an additional $105 per year, according to the Logan County Auditor’s Office.
This additional levy request is on top of the existing 1.5 mills levy that is already in place. That existing levy currently costs a $100,000 property $34.42 annually, according to the auditor’s office.
Without an influx of operating revenue, the Indian Lake EMS is on pace to run out of money by 2026, according to public presentations made by the Indian Lake EMS levy committee.
Chief Adam Niederkohr and the whole EMS board maintains the agency has corrected its bookkeeping practices and is now more accurately tracking its revenues and expenses, including money lost from partial insurance or Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements.
No longer is the agency losing money each month, financial record show, but there is nowhere near enough left over to save up for new ambulances or to complete the unfinished building across the street.
“We can’t put money for these projects in a capital improvements fund, because there is no capital improvements fund and there’s not enough extra coming in to build one up,” Niederkohr has said previously.
In addition to new squads and to complete its new station, a new levy would also fund cost-of-living salary adjustments for staff.
Thirteen other EMS departments in the county have a levy, averaging 3.2 mills, the chief said. Of those, 11 are volunteer departments.
The EMS district currently has approximately $139,000 in a primary account at Osgood Bank. Payroll over a given two-week period averages under $6,500, according to financial reports supplied by the EMS district.
An $874 interest payment was made in July against the $20,000 financed earlier this year to purchase new heart monitors for the ambulances. Two more interest payments remain on that three-year loan, according to clerk Susan Yelton.
However, if the EMS district pays that borrowed money back early, then interest paid on the loan will be reimbursed, according to terms of the financing agreement.
It’s long-term expenses such as those heart monitors for the squads that the EMS chief believes make the levy necessary now.
Since the resignations of its former chief and board president, the flow information and necessary paperwork between the EMS and county government has improved, Logan County Auditor Michael Yoder said.
“They have cleaned up their act considerably and we have been receiving everything on time,” the auditor confirmed.
Other changes this year have included hiring a designated clerk with experience in county government to handle bookkeeping.
Additionally, the EMS district has adopted Uniform Accounting Network practices, a system of bookkeeping used extensively by public bodies in Ohio.
As the EMS district works to tighten up its financial record keeping, calls for service remain steady, data show.
Indian Lake EMS first responders have registered more than 100 calls for each of the first 10 months of the year for the first time, according to data compiled by the Logan County Sheriff’s Office. The 1,045 runs already logged this year has surpassed the 851 total runs registered in all of 2016.
The average response team for the Indian Lake EMS is about 1:34 out the door, according to information shared by the EMS, but aging equipment and unreliable ambulances threaten to undermine the work of the Indian Lake EMS technicians, levy supporters have said.
“We’ve developed a five-year plan for the EMS district, and it involves passing this levy so that we can make the kinds of capital improvements we need to make to our facility and equipment,”
Niederkohr concluded during an August regular meeting.