Letter to the editor: MED-Star deserves funding

The Brandon Valley Journal correctly reported that Minnehaha County has not decided to financially support MED-Star Ambulance service. 
Volunteer services in the county receive $50,000 a year. Working on a tight budget for 2019 the county commission rushed past the new request from MED-Star and many other new funding requests. We never discussed the MED-Star request and did not vote on it. My hope is that we will be able to revisit the issue and find the money to support MED-Star and the people of the Brandon area.
The collapse of any of our ambulance services would be a crisis for our county. Certainly, the county is not required by law to provide ambulance but those services are integral to public safety. Fire, police and ambulance are the three legs of public safety. Public safety is important for all of us.
Support for ambulance has diminished at the commission over the past 12 years. At one point the three “volunteer” units each received $90,000 a year each. Today they only get $50,000! Some commissioners would like to drop funding altogether. In fact, they spent $40,000 on a study of the issue hoping it would support terminating county support.
If the Humboldt unit went out of business I would hope to give their successor organization Humboldt’s stipend. Were MED-Star to quit operating and Garretson assume that service area we would need to vastly increase funding for Garretson.
Ambulance is a complex issue. Federal reimbursement, people that don’t pay their bills, service area boundaries, mutual aid agreements etc.
I support county funding for all ambulance services. We need them! 
Sincerely,
Jeff Barth
Minnehaha County 
Commissioner

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1404 E. Cedar St.
Brandon, SD 57005
(605) 582-9999

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