Costa Mesa rejects ambulance proposal
The Costa Mesa City Council has rejected a plan to use its new ambulance f leet for patient transportation, instead opting to continue using the vehicles only for carrying Fire Department paramedics to and from emergency scenes and hospitals.
Fire Chief Dan Stefano had recommended a system that would assign ambulance transport to the Fire Department for patients with serious injuries and to an unspecified private company for non- life- threatening cases.
Such a split service, according to a city consultant, probably would have been a first in California.
On a 3- 2 vote, the council Wednesday elected to maintain the status quo. Under the current service, a Fire Department truck and one of the city’s six ambulances with paramedics responds to all emergency calls. Also responding is a private ambulance operated by Care Ambulance Service, a city contractor since 2008.
All patients are taken to a hospital by the private service; the city’s recently purchased ambulance f leet is not used to transport patients.
Patients in critical condition are accompanied in the private ambulance by city paramedics, with a city ambulance in tow to give responders a ride back to the fire station.
Councilman Gary Monahan, who voted to keep the current system, said Costa Mesa’s paramedics will continue to be the first responders on emergency calls. He said the system “really isn’t broken.”
Mayor Pro Tem Jim Righeimer said the f ire chief ’ s proposal would amount to an undue expansion of government and the hiring of more public employees whose pensions are costly for taxpayers.
“Government does not need to be getting any bigger,” Righeimer said.
Councilwomen Sandy Genis and Katrina Foley dissented.
Foley was critical of Righeimer’s reasoning, calling his vote against the recommendation “predictable.”
“This was never about the care for the community of Costa Mesa,” she said. “It’s always about a narrow lens which relates to you don’t want to hire one more person in the city who might get a pension. That is just irresponsible.”
Genis called the current system “horribly inefficient” and noted that the recommended option could have boosted city coffers by as much as $ 2.5 million annually — about $ 1.8 million more per year than the city now receives in recovery of costs associated with ambulance service.
Mayor Steve Mensinger, who voted with the majority, said the city should continue looking at options, particularly its cost- recovery mod- els, to see if it can acquire more funds.
In 2013, the council agreed to a 17- point plan that restructured the Fire Department. It came two years after a decision not to disband the department and outsource fire services to the Orange County Fire Authority.
Capt. Rob Gagne, president of the department’s f irefighters union, said in a statement that his association is disappointed with the final outcome.
“To have politics get in the way of progress — after the citizens have purchased six ambulances with the intent of transporting, after the 17- point reorganization plan is nearly completed and after the entire city staff, including the CEO, supported and recommended a cost- recovery option — it is disheartening to witness the council majority’s inability to move forward,” Gagne said.