Benton County's Quorum Court will make yet another run at raising new money to help pay for ambulance services in rural, unincorporated areas. At a meeting Thursday, justices of the peace intend to choose from two options to refer to voters: a 0.2-mill increase for all property owners in Benton County, including cities; or an annual $40-per-household fee for unincorporated areas.
The county needs the money because officials in seven cities who currently send ambulances into unincorporated areas say they are no longer willing to do it without some sort of subsidy. If the county government can't or won't chip in, city officials have said they won't be able to continue service to the rural areas, leaving residents there without an ambulance to call.
Rural Benton County residents will find out soon how the Quorum Court hopes to help pay for their ambulance service. It’s no surprise that city dwellers will still expected to foot part of the bill.
If you've heard all this before, that's not surprising. This debate has raged for years. It came to a head in 2013 when the cities (Rogers, Bentonville, Siloam Springs, Springdale, Bella Vista, Gravette and Pea Ridge) presented the county with their requests totalling $925,000 to provide service for the following year.
Quorum Court members did the right thing by agreeing to pay it to keep the ambulances running. However, their plan to cover the ongoing costs -- an $85 annual fee per household in unincorporated areas -- failed miserably in a February election, sending the court back to the drawing board.
What's developed since then are the two proposals mentioned above. The millage, which would apply to city residents as well as rural residents, would add roughly $4 a year per $100,000 of property value to tax bills and raise close to $835,000. The $40 household fee would apply only to those areas left uncovered for ambulance service if the cities backed out, and would raise only about $528,000.
Rural county residents, who roundly criticized previous attempt at an annual fee, and a number of Quorum Court members, appear to favor the millage increase. That fits with their previous arguments that the cities owe the service to county residents by virtue of their patronage at the cities' businesses, and payment of city sales taxes. City residents, however, can rightly argue that they are already paying for ambulance service within the city and shouldn't be responsible for what is essentially a county problem.
While the relatively small amount of tax the millage will collect from each property owner may make its passage more likely, even among city dwellers, there's still a sense that the county residents are lobbying to have things both ways: They get to live outside the city, free of franchise fees and other taxes, while getting substantial benefit of municipal services.
It seems likely that the Quorum Court will pursue the path of least resistance and choose to place the millage hike before the voters for approval. That's probably the option that has the best chance of success. Justices of the peace warn that without new money, some drastic cuts in county services will likely ensue to keep the ambulances running.
Let's remember, however, that even if a proposal passes, the county will not have solved the problem. The cities' demand for payment for continued service increases to $1.1 million next year and $1.2 million the year after that. Even with the more lucrative option, Benton County will have only closed the funding gap a bit. The Quorum Court will still have to figure out how to fit those ambulance payments into the budget, keeping the spectre of reduced services very much alive.
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Editor's note: This editorial was written by editorial staff of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC and was originally published Sunday, July 20, in the Rogers Morning News.
Editorial on 07/23/2014