What are the priorities for the Travis County Emergency Service District No. 2 over the next few years, as funding has been preserved?
No. 1 is to maintain our current level of service. Currently, we're providing really high levels of fire and EMS support and [will continue] working to maintain the Insurance Service Office, or ISO, Class 1 rating, which requires performance measures [tied] largely response times. ...
The area that we can improve on is that far eastern part of our district. We have a permanent fire station currently being constructed out there right now, that we hope will be done in the summer. That will allow us to keep an engine company out there, and will obviously be a big deal in addressing the high growth out in the further eastern part of our district... We're also working on a permanent building for our station eight. Currently, that crew is [operating] in a mobile home. ...
It's continuing to remain focused on training and developing paramedics. Right now, we have about 60 paramedics. We'd like to have about 80 paramedics for the way we currently operate right now.
Why did Travis County ESD No. 2 stop providing ambulance services in 2022?
We originally got into the ambulance business to be a supplement to Austin Emergency Medical Services. There was never a plan for us to be the sole provider of EMS for all of Northeast Travis County. We were responding to the increased demand out here and really Austin EMS difficulty keeping up with growth. ...
The plan was we would staff two ambulances to supplement the two Austin EMS ambulances that were [already] here. Well, once we got those two ambulances in service, the two Austin EMS ambulances were moved. That decision was not made by us. We didn't agree with that, but we didn't have control of that. That left us to serve the entire district, which is something we were never fully funded or set up to do. We did our best for about five years.
Then we began to see changes in the legislature, which restricted our ability to grow our budget accordingly. Senate Bill 2, the Texas Property Tax Reform and Relief Act, was a big kind of factor that led us to saying this was unsustainable. We communicated with the city, with the county... then the city of Pflugerville chose to go with a for-profit ambulance provider, [Allegiance].”
Did the campaign over the ballot measure impact public perception of the fire department, and how are you engaging with the community now?
The ballot measure was [initiated by] a political action group funded largely by two developers, and there was a tremendous amount of misinformation and disinformation put out during the election. ...
It’s easy to say ‘Hey, almost 70% of the community didn't agree with what was attempted to be done’. But you’ve got to look at it another way, and say, ‘Well, there's 30% of folks that didn't agree, or maybe were confused because the ballot language was incredibly confusing’.
We are engaged in a number of different activities to make sure that we're telling our story with the communities. We're doing that through traditional social media and outreach. We also have a newsletter. We do an annual report. We have board meetings every month. We go out every day and respond to 40+ calls for service. On top of that, we're attending some sort of public education event almost daily.
These are all opportunities for us to continue talking with the public, making sure they understand what it is we do... and what our challenges are. Also making sure folks understand the immense cost of having good, reliable public safety. It's not cheap, and it does cost money. Ultimately, it's the community’s decision on what level of safety they want to have, and as we saw in November, a large majority of this community said they care about it.
What should readers know?
I just think the issue of ambulance service has been problematic in Travis County for many years. This isn't something that came out of nowhere. There was a study done in 2011 that pointed out all of the problems, most of which still remain today. ...
And you know, really, we're starting to see a change in interest in emergency services, with younger folks coming into the job. It's a lot more challenging to get people interested in this job, whereas in my day, we had people lining up to do this job—that's changing. ...
Paramedics are high level healthcare providers and you have to compensate them correctly.
[Additionally], everyone's talking about inflation, but the highest inflation that we see is medical inflation—we're talking about the cost of medication and the cost of equipment. And so you have all of those costs, and then we see what's going on with insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, where reimbursements are going down and coming into question altogether.
It's just a really, really expensive endeavor to deliver medical services in an emergency situation. If you want it done really well, to be safe and reliable, it's going to cost money.
