MOORPARK : Ambulance Station Proposal Resisted

The Moorpark City Council has spurned a rush proposal to raise taxes for a city-run ambulance station, demanding to know how much establishing local ambulance service would cost before supporting the idea.

Two council members, Clint Harper and Eloise Brown, on Wednesday urged their colleagues to create a tax that would pay for a new ambulance station in Moorpark.

Harper and Brown, frustrated with the slow ambulance service from an out-of-town operator, want to put the new tax on the November ballot. The deadline for ballot measures is about a month away.

But their colleagues would not rush into raising taxes for an ambulance station without knowing more about its costs.

Harper told his colleagues that preliminary estimates show that the ambulance station could cost up to $500,000 a year to operate, financed through a special fee or a tax that would be assessed each of the city’s 8,500 taxpaying households.

“It sounds real good, but the bottom line is it’s a half-million out of the taxpayers’ pocket,” Councilman Scott Montgomery said Thursday. He also criticized the lack of information presented to the council.

“There was no written documentation, no nothing,” he said. “We certainly need more meat on the bones.”

Time is running out for the City Council to take the steps to place the ambulance station issue before voters on Nov. 6. The measure must be filed with the Ventura County registrar by July 25. But before that, the city is required to hold public hearings.

The council agreed to hold a special meeting next Wednesday to review financing plans for an ambulance station.

“I don’t want to reject any other alternatives at this time,” said Mayor Bernardo Perez. He suggested that there may be other ways to raise money for a new ambulance station without raising taxes.

Brown and Harper for months have criticized the Ventura County Emergency Medical Services Agency, which oversees the network of ambulances and emergency medical care in the county.

The two officials say the agency has allowed one private ambulance operator to respond to accident scenes and sick patients from a station outside Moorpark on Olsen Road. The location, they say, is too far away for timely responses to critically injured or deathly ill patients.

Brown and Harper said they want a station located within the city, despite a promise by the ambulance operator on Wednesday to trim the average response time to emergency calls from 15 to 10 minutes.