Since 2010, Edmonds has been served by South County Fire (SCF) under contract for fire and emergency medical service (EMS) coverage. For 2024, the cost of that contract was approximately $12 million. A portion of that contract cost is meant to cover SCF’s cost of transporting a patient via aid car to a medical facility. Section 4.8 of Edmonds’ current contract with SCF addresses these transport fees and states:
“As the EMS service provider for the City, the District shall receive and pursue collection of all Transport Fees in accordance with District policy for transports that originate within City limits. The District shall remit the amount so received to the City, less an administrative fee…”
In other words, Edmonds relies on transport fees charged to the patient or his/her insurance carrier by SCF and forwarded the city to pay a portion of the cost of our fire/EMS contract. These fees total several million dollars and reduce the city’s general fund fire/EMS contract cost burden.
The problem lies with Ground Emergency Medical Transport (GEMT) payments collected by SCF from patients covered by Apple Health (formerly known as Medicaid) to cover the cost gap when the transport payment to SCF doesn’t cover the cost. It appears SCF views these payments as a different category than transport defined in the Edmonds contract, and believes they are entitled to retain the revenue associated with those payments.
In late 2024, an Edmonds citizen reviewing SCF’s financial reports noticed a portion of the transport revenue collected by SCF was not being forwarded to Edmonds as required in the contract section shown above. The city (mayor and council) was notified of this finding and wasn’t aware the funds were being inappropriately withheld.
According to SCF’s reports, they have been collecting the GEMT transport fees since 2019. To date, those fees for Edmonds transports total over $7 million and continue to grow. Edmonds elected officials now believe these funds are legitimately due to be paid to Edmonds and are pursuing mediation to obtain them. Unfortunately, it does not appear mediation will be complete until after the April 22 RFA annexation vote.
Especially at this time of financial crisis for our city, our taxpayer load can be eased if SCF will appropriately and fully remit all transport-related fees to Edmonds as our contract requires. Keep in mind the city intends to ask the voters this fall for a levy lift of approximately $6 million. If SCF remits the full unpaid transport payment amount to Edmonds, it will significantly reduce or eliminate the need for the fall levy request.
Again, our contract with SCF states SCF shall remit all revenue received from transport fees to the city, regardless of the source of those payments. By withholding these payments, SCF is doing a clear disservice to Edmonds taxpayers. In other words, our taxpayers will ultimately be required to fill a budget gap left by SCF’s failure to forward all EMS transport revenues to Edmonds.
This is yet another reason voters should vote no on Proposition 1 (the April 22 ballot measure to annex Edmonds into the Regional Fire Authority). Since there is a pending legal dispute between SCF and the city regarding what portion of transport revenues are due Edmonds, sufficient time is needed to resolve the dispute and ensure Edmonds receives what is likely to be a significant settlement. This revenue will provide additional flexibility for the city to either pay increasing contract costs with SCF or explore other potentially less costly — yet high quality — alternatives to obtaining fire/EMS coverage.
Edmonds resident Dave Teitzel is a former Edmonds City Councilmember.
I guess my question is when or if the city asks for the levy is that a one year deal or a permanent increase?
Jim,
I don’t mean to speak for the city since I’m no longer on Council and haven’t been involved in the discussions about what the city intends to present to the voters in the fall levy request. However, I believe it will be a one year levy request and not a permanent one. If you plan to attend the upcoming mayor’s address at the Edmonds Theater, that would be a good question to pose to him.
In reviewing the forecast in the adopted budget, it appears that the city will actually be asking for a permanent levy lid lift in the fall.
Dave, thank you for informing readers of this very important point which appears to be a breach of contract by SCF. But equally disturbing in your report is that an Edmonds citizen shed light on this. Why didn’t city employees see this discrepancy amounting to a huge loss of revenue to the city??? Has there been appropriate follow-up/discipline re those employees?
In the event a no-vote prevails re: annexation, I would like to better understand how residents will then persuade city council to spend resources exploring all other possible solutions. I can imagine both a cooperative and a non-cooperative council, depending on what other priority issues are on the table.
Matt,
You bring up a very good point. A “NO” vote will be a clear message to our city leaders that we want a different path. A path that looks at the problems from the taxpayer perspective. Will they listen – who knows. Although at least those running for re-election and those with future mayoral ambitions should. And at least one other councilmember has already shown fiscal responsibility and sympathizes with the taxpayers. So I see a definite path forward considering the Council elections in November.
To your point about priorities, what higher priority can there be than public safety? Does anybody really think that our city would leave us without fire and EMS services? Besides, the mayor found $64,000 to pay for a PR consultant to sway the vote so I’m sure he can scrape up a few dollars to explore other solutions which can save millions of dollars in the future.
Matthew, that’s a good point. There is some support from council. That said Edmonds consultant laid out a framework for an EMS prioritized delivery model that would improve response time and decrease costs up to 20%. I suggest council leverages as a starting point, hire an Emergency Services Director or similar ASAP. We’ve heard from graduates EMS educational programs, that want to be Paramedics but don’t want to be firefighters, so hire them. Start discussing a contract for Fire Services with SCF, or other area agencies or buy back the fire engine from SCF and start recruiting for firefighters.
This may sound like a tall order, but we wouldn’t be the first. Placentia CA is one example, they moved away from a regional / county fire department and went to a hybrid city employed Paramedics / Private EMS, and hired firefighters. Not saying we go that route, but that city in Orange county is larger and has a higher fire risk vs Edmonds.
The other thing to note, some of our electeds are up for re-election.
https://myedmondsnews.com/2016/04/report-edmonds-fire-ems-services-can-improve-performance-reduce-costs/
https://edmondscandobetter.org/pdf/Fitch_Executive_Summary_Report.pdf
https://edmondscandobetter.org/options
Matt,
You are correct; in the event of a no vote, the ball will be in the city’s court to determine next steps. It is my hope they will be creative in conducting a systematic, transparent and detailed assessment of all options for fire/EMS service. One idea would be for the mayor to convene another Blue Ribbon Panel, consisting of well-qualified Edmonds citizen volunteers, to work through the assessment. This could be done without hiring an expensive consultant. But there may be other ways to accomplish the assessment, and we will need to wait to see how the city wishes to pursue this work.
Mr. Teitzel, I agree that any future analysis will need to be 100% volunteer effort. Considering the current council-directed budget reductions and what feels likely to be more spending cuts on the way, I can’t imagine any hiring at all. I wish this mayor and council were not burdened with such difficult and brutal work, and I’m grateful to all 8 of our elected neighbors and friends for their service as well as all of our employees.
It seems odd that SCF would negotiate the remission of the transport fee to Edmonds when they are the ones who pay for the fuel, drivers and vehicles used in the transport. Is there more to the contract that we voters should be aware of? And how is the “administrative fee” calculated?
Mary Jo, the City if Edmonds pays all the costs of services provided by the staff in our 3 fire stations, plus a portion of the centralized overhead of the RFA. The city does that when they pay the bill the RFA sends them. The contract was established in 2010 and billing amounts were renegotiated a couple times since then. One was for a large retroactive wage increase for the firefighters, and another was when staffing was increased.
Our Council with one exception and our Mayor have made it abundantly clear that they have little to no interest in more analysis which is why the plan is already to re-submit the proposition should it fail in April. Call me crazy, but that looks like a pretty clear indication that to make contracting again or home ownership again or some sort of hybrid of that a reality, the impetus for it will have to come from public volunteers perhaps with the help of one Council Person as the Council is currently constituted. (The rest of the Council would call that unethical I’m sure as majority rules). Call me crazy again, but when you observe the RFA abruptly cancel the contract seeking to double the cost in one year and RFA withholding funds due the city according to the contract (that could possibly negate the need for a G.F. levy in the Fall) the need for looking at some sort of alternative is pretty obvious. We can find money for PR and special elections but we can’t afford to really study the problem to get the right solution. Totally preposterous logic going on here. That’s politics, not city management.
I appreciate you explaining this revenue issue that the City and the Regional Fire authority disagree on. This is a source of revenue that all Fire districts/Municipal fire departments in the State of Wash are receiving. I looked at our neighbor to the south for their practices. The Shoreline fire district had a contract for several years with the north shore (Kenmore and Lake Forest Park) fire district for providing service – including EMS. That contract in section 5 covers billing for ambulance transport. It explicitly states that Shoreline remits ALL the GEMT payments for patients in Kenmore and Lake Forest Park to the Northshore Fire district. I don’t know why Chief Eastman stated in a recent town hall to discuss RFA annexation for Edmonds that “GEMT is not transport.” Why does this RFA have an interpretation of this type of revenue that’s so different from our neighboring jurisdiction? I hole the City of Wd one’s prevails in this legal dispute resolution. The certainly need the money- after the RFA introduced the nonsense Parity argument in our 2026 contract.
Thank you, Theresa, for bringing forth Chief Eastman’s contradictory quote. His bias is apparent.