Midway Fire must advertise for ambulance partnership
BY PAM BRANNON Gulf Breeze News news@gulfbreezenews.com

Midway Fire District's legal counsel has informed the fire commissioners they cannot enter a partnership agreement with anyone to provide any ambulance service of any kind without asking for bids. So at their workshop Saturday, March 3 the MFD Commissioners decided to advertise for bids from anyone interested in partnering with them in a countywide bid to provide ambulance services for Santa Rosa County.

Partnership proposals must be in by 5 p.m. Thursday, March 15 and if any bid is accepted, it will be done at a special meeting Friday, March 16 beginning at 6 p.m.

But Saturday's workshop still did not resolve the issue of whether Midway is going to bid by itself to provide countywide ambulance or whether the district will partner with someone else. Commissioners said they also might still do neither, and just decide to take care of Midway's area and work with whoever gets the countywide bid. "Just because we ask for bids doesn't mean we are even going to accept any of those bids or even enter into a partnership at all. Our attorney just told us that we cannot even consider entering into a partnership without seeing what is available to us from all companies interested in working with Midway," explained Commissioner Jacque Gorris.

Fire Commission Chair Buck Thackeray said he was frustrated by the commission's indecision. He also said, "I was hoping that by today we would have come to some decision, as we said we would, on which way to go - whether to move ahead with a partnership or just place our own bids. This is putting our staff under a lot of stress, working on proposals we may not even use. They are spinning their wheels and using a lot of time and effort. Now if we wait until the 16th of this month to decide, then we are giving our staff only about two weeks to finish preparing a document to bid with that has to be competitive with private companies. It is not fair to our staff."

"I think we need to fish or cut bait - today!" Thackeray said.

Commissioner Jacque Gorris asked Midway Fire Chief Stephen Demeter what he and the staff would need to make the process easier, and the Chief said "some direction". He said the staff had prepared a raw proposal which was presented to the commissioners during the workshop, but they needed to know whether to keep working on a bid proposal or not. He also said if they were going to bid on a countywide service handled only by Midway Fire, with no partnership, they needed their financing in place and it would take $3,000 to get the loan put together and the assurances written to present to the county along with the bid proposal.

Commissioners passed motions approving $3,000 be spent for the loan work, and for the staff to put together a complete proposal for Midway Fire to bid on the countywide contract for ambulances services without a partnership. But commissioners also passed a motion to review all proposals for a possible partnership and make a final decision at the March 16 meeting of what direction to go.

The Chief had presented Commissioners with a recommendation for language for the bid proposal request they will advertise this week. It outlined that Midway would accept providing ambulance transport services for a minimum of $300 per transport from any private ambulance service they partnered with. The proposal also said Midway would be willing to supply two staffed ALS rescue units at its own expense, and pay for fuel and supplies and maintenance, with the private company doing all the billing.

The proposal said based on the 1,000 known transports in the district for last year, that would give Midway Fire a guaranteed minimum $300,000 per year.