The Marion County Board of Supervisors heard an update on the progress of a potential essential services declaration and future levy for EMS at their meeting Tuesday.

Dylan Morse represented an advisory committee formed by the supervisors to discuss how close EMS leaders are to making a formal proposal to eventually get a ballot measure in front of voters to approve a potential property tax increase to fund ambulance deficits across the county. Morse says the group of EMS leaders are in agreement that they would likely cap a proposed levy at $.65 per $1,000 of valuation, as other counties who attempted to go for the maximum $.75 number have not had success. The advisory group ultimately is advising the Marion County Board of Supervisors to move forward with declaring EMS an essential service.

While Morse and the committee believes this is best solved at the federal level through an increase in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, they believe that likely won’t be a viable solution in the near term to attack $600,000 in deficits run up by ambulance services in Pella and Knoxville, who serve the majority of Marion County residents, and the other smaller agencies.

Morse also says that any levy that’s approved won’t make any emergency medical services agency in the county whole, but it will help ensure that any county resident receiving services for ambulance will be contributing to the city agencies that serve them.

A vote by the Marion County Board of Supervisors to make EMS an essential service could happen as soon as the May 28th meeting, which would begin the process of getting a potential levy for voters to approve on a ballot in the near future. The advisory committee did not land on a funding distribution formula, which Morse says could fall in the hands of an official EMS committee to be formed after the ballot process begins.