Still no vote on handing ambulance service over to Lee County
Ambulance service issue still unresolved
Whether or not the Lehigh Acres Fire Department’s ambulance service will be turned over to Lee County to operate is still up in the air, despite a meeting Nov. 18 in which the public expected a decision by the fire commissioners.
Now no decision can be made until the next meeting on Thursday, Dec. 17 at 4 p.m. when commissioners meet at the Veterans Park Community Center.
During the meeting, Fire Chief Don Adams honored Tim Hirt and Yvan Veilleux for pulling a neighbor out of his burning home. They were given awards of appreciation for their help.
Chief Adams told commissioners in October that he feared for the lives of his firefighters because he had so few of them following a massive layoff in August in order to balance the budget.
He said he thought it would be better to take personnel who man the ambulances in Lehigh and put them on fire trucks and let the county ambulance service, for which Lehigh taxpayers pay for, to the tune of millions of dollars, take over the ambulance transport business. He said he feared the upcoming dry season when brush fires take place.
But at the October meeting, commissioners voted two to two to hand the service to the county. Julie Barrett was absent due to a serious illness of one of her children and could not be at the meeting.
The issue has become very emotional with some Lehigh residents, who point with pride that Lehigh formed its own ambulance service and that it was top rated and responsive. In fact, Commissioner Ralph Hemingway made that argument in October and he did so again at the November meeting last week.
But at this last meeting, Jeff Berndt, the chairman of the fire board, was not in attendance. However, he spent some minutes on a cell phone hook-up participating in the meeting which board attorney Richard Pringle said was legal because there was a quorum at the meeting.
Also at the meeting were several people who had planned to make comments at the public question period. Now they will have to wait until December.
One person, Robert Anderson, became angry as he sat on the front row and wanted to make comments, but was not allowed to and he got up and stormed out of the meeting room.
In addition to discussing the ambulance service again and possibly voting on it, commissioners were also planning to reorganize the board, to vote for a new chairman or to retain the officers as is.
But two motions were passed that both the issues on the agenda in February. It was just after that when Berndt had to hang up his cell phone and was not available for any other parts of the meeting.
At the last meeting, Commissioners Dave Adams and Ralph Hemingway voted not to hand the service to the county while Commissioners Joel Guzman and Jeff Berndt voted to hand the operations over to the county EMS.
Berndt and attorney Richard Pringle had met with county officials who agreed to take over the service and to lease space at Lehigh fire stations. It would have meant the reopening of the new station on Milwaukee Blvd.
After the meeting last week, Commissioner Adams was asked how he would have voted this time around on the ambulance issue and he said he had no comment.
However, Julie Barrett was asked the same question after the meeting was over and she told The Citizen she would have voted to keep the ambulance service in Lehigh.
She said her reasoning was the income that the ambulance service provides the fire service here.
“We’re talking about a million dollars in loss revenue if we hand it over to the county,” she said.
So after examining the way the commissioners may have voted last week, the vote still could have gone either way because Commissioner Adams wouldn’t say how he would have voted. If he had changed his mind last week from the way he voted in October, the majority of the board would have agreed to let the county handle ambulance transport service for Lehigh. The yes votes to keep the service may have come from Adams, Barrett and Hemingway.
Barrett wanted to vote last week however because when the motion was made to put it off until December, she was the only one to vote no.
That could have met the service would be keep in Lehigh had she voted to keep it here and was joined by Commissioners Ralph Hemingway and David Adams. Commissioner Joel Guzman may have been the sole vote to hand it over to the county. If Berndt had voted via cell phone, it could have been a 3-2 vote to keep the service in Lehigh.
During the short discussion, Hemingway said “that if we lose (the ambulance service), we will never get it back.”
“We’re getting a million dollars for the service and you all know that the county won’t give that income up and won’t give the service back to us,” Hemingway said.