By Brandon Formby
The Dallas Morning News
IRVING, Texas — Irving residents who need an ambulance are charged the lowest rates in North Texas for the response, according to city officials. But residents will soon be the only ones in the entire state paying a monthly $1.50 charge on their water bills to supplement emergency services.
The new charge, approved by the City Council on Thursday, has created division between council members and among residents over how the city should fund what is typically considered a basic and essential service. It’s also raised questions about whether — or how much — the city should expect to regain for providing ambulances.
And Irving could be the only city in Texas where such questions will play out.
That’s because the new state law that expressly allows EMS funds to be generated through charges to municipal water customers applies only to two cities - Garland, which may not take advantage of the option, and Irving, which lobbied for the ability.
The council voted 7-2 to implement the fee. Beth Van Duyne and Tom Spink cast the dissenting votes.
“When we pay our taxes, we assume we’re getting certain services,” Spink said. “I’m just representing the people who called me.”
But as they added the fee, council members also voted unanimously to lower the amount residents are charged when they require an ambulance.
City leaders who support the water bill charge say they are being fiscally responsible by guaranteeing a stable revenue stream for future capital projects and operations costs for emergency services. They also touted the fact that the Irving Fire Department’s cardiac patient survival rate is tops in the state and No. 2 in the nation. And residents who back the charge say part of living in a community that provides vital services to the public is sharing in those costs.
“How you fund it, I don’t care, I really don’t,” Wally Banks told council members at Thursday’s meeting. “I’m more interested in the emergency services. If I need them, I need them.”
Opponents say the charge is a “stealth tax” and that the service is already being paid for through property and sales tax collections. They say if the city needs the money, it should cut other items and stop saying that next year’s budget is balanced and won’t require a tax rate hike.
“In my opinion a fee for an essential service is a tax no matter how furious the noise or fervent the distraction about what’s charged,” Tom Duncan said.
The successful legislative amendment that expressly made the fee a reality was introduced by Democratic state Reps. Rafael Anchia of Dallas and Senfronia Thompson of Houston. Lobbyists for Irving worked on the matter with Anchia, whose district covers a small swath of the city north and south of Texas Stadium.
Anchia was out of the country this week and could not be reached for comment. Legislative aides were also unavailable for comment. Phone calls to Thompson’s office were not returned Friday.
A lobbyist who worked with Anchia’s office on Irving’s behalf deferred comment to city officials on Friday. Mayor Herbert Gears said City Manager Tommy Gonzalez approached the council with the idea of pursuing the matter with the state Legislature, but Gears said he didn’t know who in the city first thought of the idea.
“It’s not uncommon for cities to be looking for different revenue streams,” he said.
The amendment Anchia and Thompson introduced was added to a bill aimed at changing the procedures that municipal police and firefighters must follow when filing grievances. Grand Prairie Democratic state Rep. Kirk England, whose district also covers part of Irving, voted for the amendment. Republican state Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, whose district is wholly within Irving, opposed it. She said Friday that she could not remember the details of the amendment or why she voted against it.
“I don’t remember much about it except that it was something Rafael introduced late in the session,” Harper-Brown said Friday.
Garland officials are aware of the option but aren’t likely to implement it there any time soon. Eric Brown, the vice president of the Garland Fire Fighters Association, said his city made a big push a couple years ago to increase the money it collects from billing for ambulance services. He said the city’s collection rate is about 70 percent.
Irving, though, has a collection rate of about 45 percent, which is part of the reason officials said they needed to implement the $1.50 fee.
Irving Fire Chief Mario Molina on Thursday said the city recently signed a new contract with a collections company but that it was too soon to tell how effective that move could be.
“It’s not the number of calls that impact the cost, it’s having that service available,” Molina told council members.
He also said that if the city were to raise the charge for ambulance response, people would be less likely to call for help.
Gears this week said that the city has yet to adopt its budget for next year and could end up lowering the tax rate.
“We don’t know yet,” Gears said. “However, we know moving forward we have this consistent revenue stream.”
Copyright 2009 THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS