I read yesterday in the Daily Herald that Glen Ellyn still has a budget deficit of 600 thousand dollars, even after cuts of 2 million. So I must ask again, why oh why do we want to get into the ambulance owning business? The initial costs will be high but even they will pale in comparison to the liability costs of even ONE judgement against the Village. Privatization was and still is the way to go, especially when it comes to our communities emergency medical care. Our Village President and Trustees aern't medical experts are they? I for one not only want us to stay out of the ambulance owning business but I'm for keeping things as they are. Ever hear the old adage don't change whats working. We have experienced paramedics who have been serving our citizens for 20 yrs. If we want to experiment, lets do it on an issue that is not life or death .....remember it could be your life that depends on it.

Tort Immunity would protect the village from that ONE judgment. Unless people like Fan get around it. Lawyers!

Does Tort Immunity extend to privatization agents?

I believe the village wants to do this to save money from what I understand we could save roughly one million dollars doing this. Oh yes we can keep the current paramedics so no drop in quality also we can purchase insurance to cover any liability.

The only person to complain about this has been Armstrong who in addition to being on the village board is the brother in law of the owner of the current medical company. But there is no conflict of interest, honest he even says so.

The initial projections did appear to show a nearly 1 mil. savings but the numbers were very skewed. Those projections showed deflated costs and inflated revenues and did not take into account the actual revenue history.
The current vendor showed that we can add the second 24 hour ambulance and keep the same experienced paramedics at a cost of about 3K more per year than owning them.
Conflict or not, Trustee Armstrong was not the only one opposed to owning ambulances. It just does not make sense to do so, especially in this economy.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Candidate,

Is that $3K...as in $3,000.....as in next to nothing? Or is that a typo?

If anyone thinks the Tort Immunity Act is some kind of magic lawsuit shield, they are misinformed. It doesn’t apply to vehicle accidents unless the vehicle was responding to an emergency, and even in an emergency a plaintiff can get around it by arguing that the driving was willful and wanton as opposed to merely negligent. Get insurance to cover any liability? Maybe, but at what cost? Why not let the contractor take on that expense?

FWIW, we have had the opportunity to use the cash cab a few times while living here...as recently as two weeks ago. I can tell you that I have had nothing but praise for the service.

I don't know enough about the issue to have an informed opinion...but the service seems just swell as it is.

Also...a shout out to Shannon and Dick for their professionalism and care of my stricken family member. If I had asked politely, I think Shannon might have let me operate the siren.

I'm not a lawyer but I am a taxpayer and I believe government should ONLY be involved in the basic essentials as public safety (police and Fire ) and helping those in need. I do not want them involved in the owning or operating of ambulances. Owning and operating ambulances should be out sourced to EXPERIENCED PROFESSIONALS.That seems so obvious.Let's not fool around with emergency medical care. In the 20 yrs we've had our current medical provider has there been ANY mistakes made that has cost a life?...........Let's work this out and keep what we have. If we want to try "something new" lets do it with a different issue and stay away from the life saving EMS arena OK?

Am I wrong in my thinking that we own the ambulances....but employ the same people who are driving them about?

If we keep the Same Paramedics and we can do it for cheaper then why not take a look at it. As far as I can see there are only two arguments against this .

1. Experience of the paramedics , but if they are kept then that is no longer an issue.

2. Tort Liability: Again there seems to be laws on the books that protect us against that as well as insurance which would also limit our liability.

The whole tort thing is a red herring. The Village was recently sued because one of its officers shot and killed someone who was attacking him. Should we disband our PD or take away their weapons because of fear of a lawsuit.

Just because something has worked is no reason to not continue to look at alternatives. I mean hell living in caves worked for awhile. Slavery worked, Jim Crow worked, all kinds of silly things worked .

If you are interested in this topic, I encourage you to attend the Village Board workshop on Monday 2/16 at 7:00 pm. You'll have the opportunity to ask questions and state your opinion.

Clam - Metro now provides the ambulances, the staffing and does the billing and collecting.

Because of this, one related issue is that the Village currently has no visibility into what Metro is charging and what they are collecting. I for one may have been mistakenly billed to the tune of several hundred dollars (at the last workshop, neither the village nor Metro's management were completely sure whether or not I should have been charged at all).

I am with you on looking at options but the best result would be to keep the same experienced operators, not buy ambulances and have our current provider tighten their numbers to make it work for us and them.
Our current provider actually presented an option that would do just this but it was left on the cutting room floor.
One of the problems is that the proposals keep changing????
At this point it may be best to set some new rules and then have everyone come back with their best offer.
Sounds like Clam may want to start driving one of these things. Maybe we can have an all volunteer ambulance service. Calling Dr. Howard...

quote:

the Village currently has no visibility into what Metro is charging and what they are collecting.

Amazingly they did not even ask for this information when they set up their budget info for the purchase option. Superior collects 550k +- now and miraculously we are going to start collecting $750k. I guess we could start hurting people to raise revenues. Thats kind of like a tax increase but it provides more immediate gratification.

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Regardless of who the provider is, the best way to go would be stay with the type of set up we have now. Contract on a fixed price for the service, let them provide the ambulances and be responsible for their own collections.
It eliminates a lot of risk in this volatile economic time.
We won't have the liability associated with owning, maintaining,equipping ambulances and would not have to bet on increased revenues to pay for them.
According to a recent proposal, this service can be provided for the same price as the projections show for owning them plus we could make additional revenues if their collection percentages increase.

What happened last night?

Last night got VERY heated and took almost 3 hours to discuss...or more like battled out. Here is the article to read: mysuburbanlife.com...

Basically it seemed like no matter what anyone said, the village manager and deputy village manager had their minds set on this PSSI company for medics and to purchase ambulances. It seemed like the village still doesn't have a firm number as to the cost of all this. I just think that given the economy and that the village has a budget deficit, how could they make any purchasing decisions?

Also, at the very end when discussions arose about what benefits would be given to the current medics by the new company, some of the medics jumped up in disagreement that any discussions ever occurred and were quickly quieted by the village president. So that led to one of the trustees to ask the Chief if he still wants to switch medic companies if his "hand-selected" 7 medics chose not to go along and he said "yes"...I think everyone was in total disbelief that the chief, who had been preaching team building the whole time, was actually a sell out and did so publically. It appeared as if his medics, whom had looked up to him as their leader, were in total disgust.

All in all, if you ask me, something smells fishy.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ted E.,

I think everything the Village does smells fishy.

this, PD Ackerman projects, the cheif of police scandel, the proposed pre-school at Park and Hillside......

After riding in ambulances several times as both a patient, a passenger and a parent, I can certainly understand why the village manager, deputy village manager, fire chief and majority of the board want to buy these things. This is not surprising to me as they are awesome! Nothing is cooler than sitting up front and watching the chumps ahead of you clear out. The siren? Just icing on the cake.

What does surprise me about that article is that we still have a "deputy" village manager that is speaking for a full-fledged, official village manager. What happened to that guy?

Re: the Deputy Village Manager (BTW, who came up with that title anyway?), I think it really would be beneficial to the village to look at how many positions are duplicitous and/or unnecessary. His may well be one of them. Perhaps I am mistaken. And if we are keeping that position around because of the less-than-fabulous way the village manager orchestrated his debut...well...not good enough. We hired and paid for a squeaky clean, brand new, authentic village manager...let him speak to the press. I for one would like to see my tax dollars at work.

Looking elsewhere...I have lived in this town for 15 years and not once have I utilized the cashier office in the Civic Center. Don't know who works there, what they do, how many...etc. Probably the nicest people in the world, but are not most of those services available online of via mail? If it is done by more than one person...that should probably be looked at, too.

Owning ambulances vs. the current situation. Cheaper or more expensive? Haven't been paying attention.

Did you have to sniff when you wrote this? Walk over there sometime and meet the people who actually have contact with the public. Outside of the police.

Not to sound like Fan but....jerk.