I appreciate the opportunity to address this great question and your concerns. First, let me clarify that people are not charged anything for firefighters responding to house fires or car crashes. However, if transport to a hospital is required there is a fee, and our fee is lower than the fee charged by Lee County EMS and lower even than what medicare pays.
Unfortunately the taxes collected do not fully support providing Advanced Life Support (Ambulances) to the community. We do not want to unduly burdened tax payers by having everyone pay for the cost of providing this service when they do not use it. Therefore, a fee structure for those that use the services helps defray expenses and lower the burden for taxpayers. However, even with the fees this is not fully funded by the minimal charge. It would cost several times the current cost to fund the cost of providing an ambulance service. This holds true for Lee County EMS whose transport fees are higher than the District’s. By having a transport fee the fire district is able maintain a lower Ad Valorum tax rate.
Also consider that a percentage of users are simply visiting here or passing through. Without a marginal user fee local taxpayers would bear the burden of paying the whole expense.
We are absolutely concerned about the amount of out-of-pocket expense to residents for transport fees and that is why we have one of the lowest fee structures in the area. In fact, Medicare pays more on many of the types of transports than the District is currently charging. That is why Commissioners are currently looking at possibly raising the fee to the Medicare rate.
Emergency services such as 911 responses have rapidly gained importance in recent years with the increased threat of terrorism, pandemic illness, and disaster response, not to mention the tremendous growth we’ve seen in our area in recent years. Accordingly, communities have a greater interest in ensuring adequate funding for such a valuable service.
Much like user fees such as tolls to cross Alligator Alley or the bridges to and from Cape Coral, the idea of ambulance and emergency response user fees are now widely used across the country. In fact, the District has five ambulances to provide Advanced Life Support transport service which is one of the highest levels of services in the area for the lowest price. If Lee County provided EMS to the District the user fees would be higher and their ambulances could be called out of the area at any time. Our ambulances are dedicated to Lehigh Acres, except for a very rare occasion when Lee County EMS does not have any available units and then we will assist those Fire Districts next to ours.
I hope this, at least in some small way, helps you understand that user fees are commonplace in many areas of government, that our ambulance user fees are generally lower than others in our area and that we will do everything we can do to keep the burden on taxpayers and users as low as possible.
Patrick Comer
Public Information Officer