Ventura Will Take Over Emergency Ambulances : Government: Starting next year, the city will run its own vehicles, but will staff them with both firefighters and contract paramedics.

When his father was struck by a car two years ago, Ventura resident Larry Graham says, firefighters arrived on the scene within four minutes and then stood by helplessly, prevented from performing advanced life support.

Under a contract with a private ambulance service, the firefighters had to wait for CareLine California to arrive. The ambulance crew arrived six minutes later, Graham says, but his father was dead before he got to the hospital.

“Would that six minutes have made a difference? I don’t know,” Graham says. “But the people of Ventura deserve that chance.”

It is partly because of stories like Graham’s that, by next July, Ventura will become the only city in Ventura County to break away from private contractors and operate its own ambulances. The Fire Department will staff two engines and three ambulances with paramedics.

The City Council late Monday agreed to abandon its contract with CareLine California in favor of a city-run paramedic plan after the existing agreement expires.

“It’s better that we control the quality of service that we have here,” Councilman Jim Monahan said. “Our firefighters are on the scene eight out of 10 times sooner than the private ambulances.”

The 5-1 council vote followed more than three hours of often stirring testimony from citizens lobbying for a city-run ambulance system.

Downtown businessman Dee Frisbee said the city should run its own ambulances to speed up the response time, which he said drags to 10 minutes or more under CareLine.

“Waiting 10 minutes is a long time,” Frisbee said. “Especially if you’re having a heart attack.”

Not everyone on the panel, however, agreed with Graham and Frisbee.

Mayor Tom Buford said he was not convinced that the city would receive the estimated $1 million in new revenue over the next five years or that the city should enter the life-support business.

“It’s a fairly major change,” Buford said. “I’m not convinced that the system we have now is seriously deficient.”

Earlier this year, Ventura County officials considered training firefighters as paramedics but rejected that plan as too costly.

City firefighters have been working for more than two years to persuade the City Council to allow them to operate their own ambulance service.

They said they can do the job quicker, more efficiently and less expensively. And they collected more than 1,800 signatures from residents who agreed that firefighters should be allowed to work as paramedics.

David Hilty, president of the Ventura City Firefighters Assn., said that eight firefighters have been trained in advanced life support but that “they’re not being used to their full potential.”

With the contract with CareLine California set to expire June 30, Fire Chief Dennis J. Downs presented three options for providing ambulance service beginning in July, 1996.

One plan would have staffed all of the city’s ambulances with firefighters trained in advanced life support services.

Another option, the alternative recommended by Downs and approved by the council, would have the city running its own ambulances, but staffing them with a mix of firefighters and contract paramedics.

The third plan, supported by Buford, would have created a paramedic service through a public-private partnership.

CareLine executives, who negotiated with city officials for months to keep a piece of the business, said the city could save money by continuing to work with the firm for paramedic service.

“We believe that the partnership arrangement we’ve proposed blends the best of the services and gives the taxpayer the most bang for their buck,” said Steve Murphy, a company vice president.

But a majority of council members disagreed.

“Our firefighters have made this a goal,” Councilman Steve Bennett said. “They’ve gone out and collected signatures. This gives us maximum local control.”