Ambulance funding will get another referendum

Officials are running out of options to pay for service

By Gail Peckler-Dziki

Correspondent

Both the Village of Antioch and the First Fire Protection District will go to referendum again in April in an attempt to raise additional funds for ambulance service.

If this attempt fails, the village will simply enact deeper cuts to services. But the fire protection district has no other source of funding other than taxes.

Currently, fire district and the Antioch village fire department operate as one unit, while the funding comes from two sources – village residents though general taxes and the fire district through a specific fire service tax on property tax bills.

With the demise of the Antioch Rescue Squad, both governments now depend completely on tax dollars to make sure an ambulance will roll when a call comes in.

One measure taken to attempt to spread current funds further was to close Fire Station 3, the one station owned by the fire district alone. The goal had been to fully staff that station along with Stations 1 and 2.

According to Antioch Fire Chief John Nixon, the result of that money-saving effort is that response times are longer and there are fewer personnel available to respond.

Some believe that another property tax referendum will be successful, if the public is made aware of how dire the circumstances are. Others believe that any future referendums will lose by greater margins.

And if that is the case, what would ambulance and fire service look like in both the district and the village?

The fire district owns one ambulance and had the promise of another from the disbanding rescue squad. That didn’t happen when the membership voted not to give that ambulance to the district.

The ambulance the district owns has a cost of $73,000. The district paid $33,000 to purchase a used vehicle and for painting and mechanical updates. The Foreign Fire Fund paid $25,000 for supplies and equipment and the Antioch Firefighters Association paid $15,000 for a defibrillator and cots.

Companies outside Illinois that sell insurance to clients in Illinois pay into the Foreign Fire Fund to the State of Illinois. Those monies are then distributed to Illinois fire departments.

If the April referendum doesn’t pass in the fire district, basic and advanced life support may come from the fire truck that is dispatched. The personnel and the truck would then need to stay with the patient until a private ambulance service responds. That could take up to 30 minutes.

“By law,” Nixon said, “they have to stay. So if there is a fire somewhere in the district, the response time would be longer.”

“If the fire district does not provide ambulance service,” Tabar opined, “no mutual aid for the district would be available. You must be able to provide the same service to other communities.”

“For this year, through April 30,” he stated in a later interview, “ambulances are operating in the village and district. The district is using financial reserves to pay for the services this fiscal year. That option will not be available in the future, as the funds will be depleted. We had all three stations open from May 9 through December 1. The failure of the referendum forced a cutback of three personnel slots and thus the closing of Station No. 3.”


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