November 5th voters in Butler County will decide whether or not to begin collecting an EMS tax levy.
The Butler County Board of Supervisors have deemed EMS as an Essential Service, just like for fire and police protection.
Butler County EMS Coordinator Kari Coates tells RadioOnTheGo News that the funding would be put to good use.
“We’ve expanded our coverage and I’d like to expand our coverage by adding additional staff to help support the services that we currently have. We would hire another EMS provider to help fill in those gaps that we’re missing the calls on. And I’ve been doing a study, an ongoing study for like the last year to determine when those calls are and when that additional help is needed. So if this tax levy passes, we’ll be able to purchase another response vehicle because there will be some overlap between the time I’m responding and the time this other person will be responding. And it will help provide the equipment for that second vehicle and get that second vehicle up and going.”
Coates says besides the levy, Butler County could also use up to a 1 percent income tax surcharge.
“The state of Iowa says we can ask for 75 cents per thousand dollars of assessed value on property taxes. It also says we can do a sur-income tax not to exceed 1 percent. So on the ballot language, we’re putting that we’re only asking for 14 cents, but with permission to ask up to 75 percent if needed and also including that 1 percent. Right now there’s no plan on using the sur-income tax or going up to the 75 cents. It just costs money to every time stuff goes to an election, try to keep the expenses down. We’re asking for permission so we don’t have to do this again, because it is for 15 years.”
One more public meeting about the proposed EMS tax levy will be held Wednesday beginning at 7pm at the Parkersburg Fire and EMS building.
