Like municipal leaders in several Berrien County communities are being asked to do, St. Joseph City Commissioners have accepted that ambulance costs will be rising soon.
At a meeting this week, commissioners heard from Medic 1 Ambulance Director Jason Wiley, who explained the new fee schedule recently approved by the service’s board. Under the new model, St. Joseph’s yearly cost for ambulance services will rise from about $86,000 to $146,000, an increase of $60,000.
Wiley said the rising cost of providing services has been a problem since COVID.
“It’s everything,” Wiley said. “Staff is more expensive, benefits are more expensive, supplies are more expensive.”
Wiley said even the cost of gloves is expected to rise this summer by about 30%.
Wiley said under the previous fee schedule, Medic 1 was limited to incremental increases for municipalities that have not been meeting demand. Commissioners were asked to approve the new fees to right the ship. Commissioner Lisa Vetne said, “This is tough.” She had a question for Wiley.
“Can there be a transition phase to help our budgets? Because it’s huge,” Vetne said.
“That’s a good question,” Wiley said. “The longer we incrementally fund, the more things increase. And we have incrementally increased over the last couple of years, and it just hasn’t caught us up.”
Wiley said how various Berrien County communities have been affected by the change depends on a variety of factors. Some will be paying more, while others will be paying less.
“Just depending on where you’re at and how your municipality is structured is where you’re at. And I think as hard as some municipalities are hit — you guys, Benton Harbor, Benton Township, various others in the ownership group that have been getting a pretty cheap rate, for lack of a better term, are affected on the higher end. But I think at least now we have something objective to base it on where we can have a real discussion.”
Commissioner Michael Sarola echoed the thoughts of several St. Joe Commissioners.
“I don’t like it, but I don’t know that we have a choice,” Sarola said. “To your point, at least there’s a model here that makes sense it’s not a dart at a dartboard. I think we probably got preferential treatment because we are one of the founders and we enjoyed a really discounted rate for a long time, and that’s great but now it’s a matter of survival.”
Commissioners then voted to accept the new Medic 1 rates while instructing city staff to draft a budget amendment reflecting the change. It takes effect on June 1.
