- April 23, 2024
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Palm Coast elected officials have wanted to meet with Flagler County elected officials over emergency services for months. County officials have been reluctant. Finally, May 2, elected officials from both local governments made it into the same room at the same time — but they still couldn't hold an open dialogue with each other.
In this case, it was state public meeting laws that hampered communication between the two government bodies.
The meeting was held at the county's Emergency Operations Center, out of the city's jurisdiction. That meant that in order for city elected officials to hold a back-and-forth dialogue at the meeting with county elected officials, they would have had to vote at one of their regular meetings to hold an out-of-jurisdiction meeting, and then issue public notice for it. The meeting was proposed just weeks ago, leaving the city without time to do that. So the city could only have one of its elected officials speak at the meeting, and could not hold back and forth dialogue with the county.
The meeting started with County Commissioners Frank Meeker and Nate McLaughlin saying they weren't sure what the issue was, and why there would be a need for a joint city/county meeting. By the end of the May 2 meeting, the county officials, after listening to Palm Coast Mayor Jon Netts, agreed to hold one.
"It's been reported to me that you don't understand what the problem is," Netts said, addressing McLaughlin and Meeker. "Until we have a joint meeting where we can sit down together, I'm not sure you will ever fully understand our perspective on this."
Palm Coast officials have complained about the cost of sending out the city's big, expensive fire trucks — which can't transport patients to a hospital — on medical calls when the county is also sending out an ambulance. Palm Coast officials have called that a duplication of service, and an expensive one for the city. Meeker didn't see why that should be a county problem.
As to a proposal by McLaughlin to wait until upcoming elections are over before holding a joint meeting, Netts said, "Respectfully, this is not a Supreme Court nomination. ... We have five-and-a-half, six months before the elections. I suspect that there's plenty of time for a joint meeting."
By the time Netts had his say, near the end of the May 2 meeting, he and other Palm Coast City Council members had sat through an hour-long presentation by Flagler County Fire Chief Don Petito about county/city EMS issues.
Petito explained why some of the suggestions proposed by city officials at city meetings weren't supported by county officials.
A city proposal to take two county backup ambulances and place them at city fire stations with joint city-county crews, Petito said, would cost the county money by taking the two spares out of circulation.
"They’re spare for a reason," Petito said. To replace them, he said, the county would have to get two new ambulances, each of them costing $345,000, including all of their gear.
And, he said, there were liability issues with running an ambulance crew with staff members trained in different procedures and on different equipment, with different discipline procedures and different insurance policies.
"Everybody from the battalion chief down, they opposed this for all the reasons we’ve come up with," Petito said. "Talking to the city personal, they’re also against it. Maybe not the administration, but the line personnel are."
The simplest solution, he said, would be for the city to use what are called "jump trucks" — small trucks such as pickup trucks that can carry paramedics and gear to a patient, but which aren't used to transport the patient to the hospital — rather than fire trucks for its medical calls.
Another option, he said, would be to consolidate the city and county emergency medical services and have the city pay the county to handle EMS, much like it contracts with the Sheriff's Office to handle crime rather than maintaining its own city police force.
St. Johns County Fire Rescue Chief Carl Shank, who'd been invited to the meeting and who has worked with both Palm Coast and Flagler County fire rescue staff members, warned officials about changing a system that works.
"You folks have such a great EMS system here. ... You should really be proud of that," he said. "You have to obviously start looking at the tradeoffs and unintended consequences of tinkering with a system like you have here, and ensuring that you don't save a dime today and cost a dollar down the road."
The city and county have not yet set a time for the proposed joint meeting.
