CLERMONT, Fla. — Clermont is continuing to press Lake County for permission to take over ambulance service within the city, arguing a locally run program would significantly improve response times.
In a Nov. 14 letter, County Commissioner Leslie Campione pushed back, saying a comparable Clermont-run service would be cost-prohibitive for residents of both the city and the unincorporated county, WESH reported.
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At an October commission meeting, Clermont outlined plans to initially staff its own ambulances with city personnel.
“Our model was showing we need six additional ambulances in Clermont to achieve that 10-minute time frame; that’s continuing to be our goal,” Clermont Fire Chief David Ezell said. “We’re seeing, especially during peak times, that we’re having so many concurrent calls that the ambulances are having to drive from distant parts of the county or, in some cases, we have no ambulances available.”
Both the city and county acknowledge that only two ambulances currently serve Clermont. Campione said the county hopes to add two more by April 2026, but Ezell argued that still won’t go far enough to fix the city’s problems with response times.
Campione wrote that creating a standalone, comparable EMS system would require major new spending on staff, vehicles, equipment, dispatch, medical oversight, billing and training — estimating startup costs at more than $7 million, far more than the $4 to $5 million the county currently collects each year from Clermont residents and patient billing. Under the city’s proposal, Clermont personnel would staff county-owned ambulances while the county continued to pay for fuel, maintenance, medical supplies and other operating costs.
Ezell said current response times average about 16 minutes and 45 seconds and should be closer to 10, which he believes would require six ambulances dedicated to Clermont, but negotiations with the county remain at a standstill.
