EMS has cut their budget – letters

Concerns have been raised about the transparency of the budget for our EMS. On their website my husband and I were able to get all of our questions answered. Our questions were no different than the other readers. They have cut staff and salaries from a couple of years ago. They are providing fantastic care; a friend lives 10 minutes from my house in town, but EMS responded to her emergency in five minutes. I can't give medical details on my patients but I am one of the therapists who treats people who were saved by our EMS. They do a fabulous job and deserve to continue. The difficulty of having a large Medicaid population is that the EMS does not get paid; our property taxes have to make up that difference. Time is of the essence in an emergency, depleting the resources by lowering the levy to 35 cents would require drastic cuts in our care. Our senior population is numerous. We need EMS at the higher levy level. I invite skeptics to look at response times and death rates in Tacoma, where they have privately funded EMS. We have a lot more to lose than a couple hundred bucks.

July 19, 2016 12:55 pm

Concerns have been raised about the transparency of the budget for our EMS. On their website my husband and I were able to get all of our questions answered. Our questions were no different than the other readers. They have cut staff and salaries from a couple of years ago. They are providing fantastic care; a friend lives 10 minutes from my house in town, but EMS responded to her emergency in five minutes. I can’t give medical details on my patients but I am one of the therapists who treats people who were saved by our EMS. They do a fabulous job and deserve to continue. The difficulty of having a large Medicaid population is that the EMS does not get paid; our property taxes have to make up that difference. Time is of the essence in an emergency, depleting the resources by lowering the levy to 35 cents would require drastic cuts in our care. Our senior population is numerous. We need EMS at the higher levy level. I invite skeptics to look at response times and death rates in Tacoma, where they have privately funded EMS. We have a lot more to lose than a couple hundred bucks.

Susan Nichols

San Juan Island