By Grace Nieland
The Gazette
MOUNT VERNON, Iowa — Voters in the Mount Vernon-Lisbon area overwhelmingly approved the creation of a special taxing district to support area emergency medical response.
Residents across the district voted on the measure Tuesday in a special election that garnered a 92% approval rate. Voters cast 947 ballots, per unofficial results from the Linn and Johnson County auditors.
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“Election services reported the turnout was significantly higher than they had anticipated for a special election, so that fact … is very encouraging to me,” said Lisbon-Mount Vernon Ambulance Service director Jacob Lindauer. “It shows the community is really behind us.”
The district will generate funds for the service through a new property tax levy estimated at 66.7 cents per $1,000 of taxable assessed value. For a resident with a $200,000 home, that equates to a roughly $64 increase in annual property tax payments.
Those funds will help support emergency services in the portion of the ambulance service’s coverage area that spans Mount Vernon, Lisbon, rural townships in southeast Linn County and Cedar Township in Johnson County.
Lindauer said it will take about a year before the ambulance service starts to see those funds, which will be used to hire at least three additional full-time staff members to ensure consistent paramedic staffing and improve local response time.
The goal isn’t to replace volunteers, he stressed, but rather add more flexibility given ongoing increases in the ambulance service’s annual call volume and stagnating insurance reimbursement rates.
“We don’t want to relax too much because this was just step one in the process, but we’re still incredibly grateful,” he said. “It’s definitely encouraging for the volunteers knowing that the community understands our needs.”
The ambulance service currently serves a population of more than 8,000 people over 150 square miles in and around southeast Linn County. Lindauer is currently the only paid staff member among a larger crew of 39 volunteers
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