Setting Steve Tanner straight on services
Dear Editor,
Last week’s letter by Steve Tanner has prompted me to write from a different perspective, about our need for professional ambulance services in Boundary County. Currently Boundary County Ambulance is run solely by volunteers with a budget of $8,000 a year.
Bonner County has full-time ambulance service with paid paramedic staff and a budget of over $2 million annually.
Their monies are raised from within the community they serve via a specific ambulance-service taxing-district.
If we were to contract with them to have an ambulance on site with a paid paramedic, it would cost the county approximately one-thousand-dollars a day.
Although the taxing district includes the evil T word, the money raised by this specific tax is designated to lifesaving Boundary County services. None of us know when we may need these services.
Two years ago, my then three-year-old niece fell and fractured her skull, which included bleeding on her brain. Although there were two ambulances parked outside the hospital, because of restrictions due to there being no ambulance operators available (remember our ambulance staff is volunteer) my sister and her husband were told to wait two hours for an ambulance from Spokane or drive her down themselves. They were given a list of Urgent Care facilities along the way to use if she convulsed. Those were their choices.
I don’t want other families to have to deal with these types of choices. We have amazing volunteers running our ambulance service, but a county with our population needs to consider the arguments for a specific taxing district, for a specific life-saving purpose, which serves all of its population.
To frame the argument using Obamacare and calling out the commissioners in an election cycle does a disservice to everyone.
The commissioners and the volunteer ambulance staff deserve at least an ear to the discussion, if not our support in their efforts to improve the lives of Boundary County residents.
Christina Cowell
Boundary County