County Administrator Faye Hughes recently explained to the Adel News the $150,000 overage on the new Emergency Medical Services (EMS) building project.
“And I think it would be good for our citizens to understand as well,” Mrs. Hughes said.
According to Mrs. Hughes, $250,000 was allocated in the 2010 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) referendum to build a facility to house EMS, at which time no one had any idea what the cost would be to build a building, unique to the purpose of housing an Emergency Medical Service. That left more than $150,000 having to come from other sources, she said.
“Plans for the building were prepared and revised many, many times over the past year and a half before a final draft was approved,” Mrs. Hughes said. “As you know we bid the project out two separate times; each time the bids were primarily in the same price range.” The bid accepted came in at $439,560 from Kelly Construction.
In June 2015, when the County and what is now Community Ambulance Service renewed the agreement to provide Emergency Medical Services, Community agreed to provide the service to Cook County at no charge. The County only needed to provide a facility to house Community Ambulance. Having renewed the agreement before the end of the County’s fiscal year, which is September 30, there were two months left in the contract year. Community Ambulance Service agreed to forfeit those payments, if the County would apply those funds, $64,166.66 toward the proposed facility. The plans had not been completed at that time.
By entering into the new agreement with Community, the County saves $385,000 per year, Mrs. Hughes said. Due to obligations in the 2015-2016 Fiscal Budget, only $135,000 of the savings from the EMS contract remained. Therefore, considering the $250,000 in SPLOST funds, $64,166.66 forfeited by Community, and the savings from the EMS service, the total funds available to apply to EMS facility is $449,166.66. “This is without additional burdens on taxpayers,” Mrs. Hughes said.
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