By Steve Whitworth
The Telegraph
JERSEYVILLE, Ill. — The Jersey County Board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to place a proposed half-percent public safety sales tax hike on next year’s ballot to help fund the Jersey Community Hospital Ambulance.
The board’s Public Safety Committee approved the proposal at its October meeting, recommending that a question raising the county’s public safety sales tax by 0.5% to support the ambulance service be placed on the primary election ballot for Feb. 23, 2027.
| WATCH: EMS ONE-STOP: Confronting FDNY’s EMS challenges
Jersey Community Hospital CEO Kevin Zachary explained why the hospital reached out to County Board Chairman Mark Wagner about finding a way for the county to provide more support for the ambulance service.
“We found ourselves in a situation where the ambulance is costing us more in subsidies than it’s generating to an unmaintainable level for the long term,” Zachary said. “We’ve had a combination of increased expenses, deteriorating reimbursement, changes in payer mix ... all the different components that go into paying for the operations of a hospital system.”
Zachary said the ambulance service’s annual shortfall is approximately $650,000, the amount the hospital is seeking to keep it operating.
Jersey County’s public safety sales tax is currently 0.75%, with a portion of that going to Jersey Community Hospital. In fiscal year 2026, Jersey Community Hospital received $74,800 in public safety sales tax revenue, Zachary said.
He said the hospital’s ambulances cover a primary service area of 377 square miles and staff two ambulances 24 hours a day. Zachary said the ambulances respond to an average of 3,500 calls per month, including mutual aid calls, transfers, discharges, and 911 calls.
During the summer, Zachary said Wagner organized a “brainstorming session” with representatives from public safety agencies around Jersey County and Calhoun County, as well as hospital executives and elected officials. Zachary then addressed a session of the County Board’s Planning Committee.
On Sept. 15, Wagner and Zachary attended the Grafton City Council’s meeting to explain the ambulance service’s precarious situation.
“We’re trying to think about what we can do to help save our ambulance service, because it’s in jeopardy of going bankrupt,” Wagner told the Grafton officials.
The county board chairman said he spoke to County Clerk Pam Warford, who told him the county’s options for increasing the ambulance service’s funding could include raising the property tax rate, “which I’m totally opposed to,” he said.
Wagner said he thought an increase in the public safety tax rate would be more acceptable to county taxpayers.
“I don’t think only 12 people on the county board should be deciding a major issue like this,” he said. “It should be up to the entire county to vote.”
As a former officer with the Illinois Conservation Police, Wagner said he recognized the need for Jersey County to have an ambulance service.
“I would hate to think that I come upon an accident scene, and someone needs medical attention, and we don’t have an ambulance service that can respond to that accident,” he said.
Ambulance calls bring in about $500, far below its costs
Zachary also addressed the Grafton council, explaining that the hospital operates three entities: the traditional hospital, its clinics and the ambulance service. Over the years, he said, the hospital has used revenues from the other parts of the business to fund the ambulance service when its resources have run short.
“Historically, the way in which we were able to cover this was basically rob Peter to pay Paul,” Zachary said. “If the ambulance service was upside down, we would pull from hospital funds or the clinic.”
The hospital CEO also pointed to the passage in Congress last year of the “big beautiful bill,” which mandated a number of changes to healthcare funding, “and more to come.”
“We’ve been very hit with that,” he said, pointing out JCH is primarily funded by Medicare and Medicaid.
Zachary also said the ambulance service collects, on average, about $500 in funding from those programs per call.
“That nowhere near covers our costs,” he said.
Grafton Mayor Mike Morrow said last week he believes that Jersey County needs an ambulance service, and he agrees the public safety tax rate increase might be the best way to address the funding shortfall. But he warned, “The devil is in the details.”
“We keep taxing and taxing, because everything keeps going up and up,” Morrow said. “We need to look at what we’re doing already. It was alluded to as the hospital was moving money around to pay for this. So there needs to be an accounting of what’s going on at the hospital, just because it is the public’s money.”
Zachary has said the hospital undergoes an annual audit.
“We have already and continue to go through a granular review of all our services and expenses to look for opportunities to decrease our expenses or increase our revenue,” he said.
© 2026 The Telegraph (Alton, Ill.).
Visit www.thetelegraph.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.