Augusta commissioners continue to waver on providing the public with a contracted ambulance service.
In a tie broken by the mayor, the commission vote failed to hire a company with only 38 operational ambulances in the entire state of Georgia and that would have cost $2.16 annually.
AmeriPro, the Procurement Department’s bid winner, proposed to provide ambulance service at a price was far above the $1.9 million requested by Gold Cross EMS. Gold Cross has served the CSRA since 1997.
“I wish somebody would tell me what Gold Cross did that was so wrong and why we should pay some company that does not have the expertise more money to do the same job,” said Brandon Garrett, mayor pro tem of Augusta.
After years of negotiations, memos of intent and heated discussions about subsidies, the city has only a month-to-month contract with Gold Cross EMS to guarantee emergency service, even though Gold Cross EMS surrendered its claim to the zone that covers Richmond County.
The Augusta Procurement Department decided to take the lead role in choosing a new ambulance service for Augusta, and the secrecy surrounding the process further ranckled commissioners.
Several Commissioners cried foul at not being allowed to see all of the accepted bids, including the one submitted by Gold Cross EMS.
According to Garrett, he and other commissioners only received the “winning” bid information the night before the Feb. 9 meeting and were not allowed to review the bid packages for the other companies that submitted bids.
“We really didn’t know what was in any of the bids, and we got the AmeriPro information, which was incomplete, the day before we were supposed to vote,” Garrett said.
In the Feb. 9 meeting, Procurement Department Director Geri Sams refused to release to the Augusta Commission the names of the individuals serving on the committee to accept the bids, stating that the information was not covered under open records.
Sams gave an impassioned speech to commissioners about the need to keep procurement bids secret, but failed to divulge the fact that once sealed bids are open, the bids are open to the public, according to Garrett.
In Tuesday’s meeting, Garrett moved to allow for a one-year contract with Gold Cross EMS; however, that vote failed with District 2 Commissioner Stacy Pulliam abstaining and preventing the mayor from breaking a 5-5 tie.
District 5 Commissioner Bobby Williams joked on a live microphone during the vote that since Pulliam abstained, he could vote ‘no’ on the Gold Cross measure.
Meanwhile, Pulliam maintains that she abstained on the advice of the city attorney, Wayne Brown, who advised commissioners against voting on any company other than AmeriPro since that company had won the bid.
According to Brown, any vote to hire a company other than the official bid-winner from the procurement department could result in “litigation against the city.”
“I abstained on the advice from the attorney, that’s why we have an attorney, so I took his advice,” Pulliam said.
Scott Hudson is the senior reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
