While Augusta’s new ambulance service, Central EMS, is crunching numbers to see how much money the city will have to subsidize them for transporting its indigent and deadbeat patients and still make a 10 percent profit, some commissioners are getting antsy to see the final tab.
Commissioner Wayne Guilfoyle said Central is going to be so far entrenched in Augusta, its fire stations and dispatch center that commissioners will be held hostage to pay whatever Central says it must have.
Opinion
“Some of us think it’s time for Central to tell us how much it’s going to cost for them to do ambulance service in Augusta,” Guilfoyle said. “They’re going to use our dispatch and house their ambulances in our fire stations, although we ran Gold Cross out of our fire stations years ago.”
However, Guilfoyle and the others might have to wait. The subcommittee of local officials appointed to advise and consent to the design and details of the new service with Central reportedly will not be presenting a subsidy amount to commissioners this week.
Priority’s consultant is still analyzing Gold Cross’s data.
“The subsidy is what we’re waiting for,” said Commissioner Catherine McKnight. “I’m fine to give them $1.9 million which is what we gave Gold Cross in the last month-to-month contract. But if they want $3 or $4 million, I’m not about to support that when we wouldn’t do that for Gold Cross.”
Officials with Central and its parent company, Priority EMS, met a second time Wednesday with the subcommittee, a majority of whom worked against Gold Cross, including the city’s General Counsel Wayne Brown, interim city Administrator Takiyah Douse, 911 Director David Dunlap, Procurement Director Geri Sams and Fire Chief Antonio Burden.
At that meeting, subcommittee chair Douse proposed that Augusta issue an emergency procurement for medical dispatch software from Priority to be used to dispatch emergency calls at Augusta’s 911 center.
But Guilfoyle and McKnight think they’re getting ahead of themselves.
Guilfoyle said without a subsidy price or a contract with Central in place, staff needs to wait to see whether commissioners will move forward with Central before buying software.
McKnight is against buying Central anything.
“Why would we offer to procure anything when we wouldn’t even extend the same assistance for Gold Cross?” she asked. “The willingness to help Central when we wouldn’t do anything to help Gold Cross is not fair.”
Nevertheless, Wednesday’s meeting agenda includes Dunlap’s request for the emergency purchase for the call taking software and equipment suite to be used at the 911 center.
“We have enclosed the quote for the purchase – $127,204,” Dunlap states.
Duped
Commissioners voted in January for Augusta to pursue the zone, but neither Brown nor Douse carried out that directive, and no explanation has been asked for or given. Not publicly anyway. And the winner of the zone, Central, is designated by the state as the sole provider of ambulance services in Richmond County.
Gold Cross had given up the zone and agreed to continue providing service in Augusta on a month-to-month basis, with the understanding that Augusta would apply for the zone, and Gold Cross would still be negotiating a contract with the city, according to the company’s President Vince Brogdon.
“We were conned into signing that,” Brogdon said. “We were duped. But we’re not leaving Augusta. We’re going to continue to serve Augusta. We’ve been here a long time. And we’re proud of the things we did and the people we helped.”
Brogdon also said the 10 percent profit Central President Gary Coker says his company must have will be going to its investors in New York.
“Everything we do stays local,” Brogdon said. “The only things we don’t buy locally are ambulances. Everything else we buy locally – uniforms, linens, supplies, tires, everything.”
Priority EMS hired Gold Cross’ Vice President Steven Vincent which Brogdon said was intended to disrupt his company, but it did not.
“It didn’t disrupt us at all,” he said. “We’re doing fine.”
As for Central housing its ambulances in Augusta fire stations, Brogdon said Gold Cross previously did that, but when Chris James became interim fire chief in 2012, he made the company move the ambulances out.
“And that was an expense for us having to find places to park our ambulances and pay utilities and taxes,” he said.
Brogdon also questioned the RFQs the city sent out in January and the people and the process used to rank them. Most of the people on the current subcommittee were also the people who evaluated the bids and ranked Gold Cross third behind two other companies.
Gold Cross was ranked high on non-subjective categories but low on subjective, which Brogdon thinks indicated that some on the ranking committees were biased.
Well, that’s not surprising, considering the years of bashing Gold Cross received from some commissioners who resented the private company and its refusal to let them run its business. They were just taking their cues from the Marxists.
Those bids became moot when Central applied for and won the zone.
Not Fine to Be Fined
After hearing about the whopping fines the IRS has levied against the city for not filing required documents related to the Affordable Care Act for as many as six years and possibly totaling as much as $15 million, one Augusta commissioner is renewing her call for a forensic audit of all city government departments.
Commissioner McKnight has placed the matter on Wednesday’s meeting agenda for discussion.
“We have an annual audit by the same company every year, and when the auditors make their presentations, they’ve never mentioned this,” McKnight said. “That’s why I’m calling for a forensic audit again. A forensic audit would have found this.”
McKnight and former Commissioner John Clarke called for a forensic audit several times when he was on the board, but some of their colleagues accused them of showboating.
Since the $2 million fine came to light, another claim has surfaced that the IRS fined the city $5 million for failing to file the ACA documents, meaning that department heads for Finance, Human Resources and Information Technology knew about it five years ago but was not disclosed to the commission.
Not to worry though. Wayne Brown has hired a high powered Atlanta law firm to make it all go away. Some of it anyway.
Cheers and Praise…
for Mayor Garnett Johnson and the more than 100 volunteers who showed up Saturday to participate in his county-wide roadway clean-up effort of the Garden City. It was a great success, and didn’t get rained out, which was a little bit of a miracle since it was raining and thundering all over the Augusta area Saturday morning.
“The Lord won’t let it rain on good work,” Johnson said.
The cleanup of major roads in south Augusta is the first step in fulfilling Johnson’s campaign promise to clean up Augusta.
“And I wanted it to be all of Augusta, not just west Augusta for Masters Week,” he said.
Johnson picked up litter along Rosier Road and said one thing he learned about Augustans is that they buy a lot of lottery tickets.
I’m so glad the mayor is off to such a good start with his clean-up Augusta initiative.
I would have driven to Augusta and participated except I feel the same way about picking up other people’s trash as I do about being forced to be my own cashier at the grocery store. I just don’t want to do it. Besides, if Moses Todd begged off because he’s too old at 72, I have a better excuse than he does.
