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By Editor Becky Watts
ZEBULON - In a Special Called Meeting held at 4:30 p.m. today, commissioners voted 4-1 to sign a contract with Ameripro to begin service in Pike County when Veterans ends their service here on June 10, 2022.
History
One May 11, 2022, Pike County Times reported in the article entitled “BREAKING NEWS: Veterans Ambulance Ends Ambulance Contract With Pike County” that Veterans Medical Transport, LLC had given a letter of termination of services to Pike County government that services would cease on June 10, 2022. Click here to read that article.
The county signed a 3 year contract with Veterans in a September 10, 2020 meeting. The bid was for $400,000 for a 3 year contract. During discussions, Ameripro bid $635,000 for a 1 year contract, $660,000 per year for a 3 year contract. $700,000 per year for a 5 year contract. Click here to read from the meeting in which the contracts were discussed.
Click here to read from the meeting in which Veterans was chosen.
Today’s Discussion
Manager Brandon Rogers advised that Ameripro and Wellstar had both been in discussions about replacing our current ambulance service, but only representatives from Ameripro were at the meeting today.
The first question was whether Ameripro could be up and running in 24 days. Larry Richardson, Co-Founder, spoke to commissioners and said yes. They have just stepped into Upson and Lamar Counties to provide service there when the past provider exited the county.
Richardson spoke about being a part of a regional system in which Pike would join with Upson and Lamar Counties. All three counties would pay a certain percentage of the costs to maintain the EMS system. They can add two ambulances for Pike County and flow seven ambulances between the 3 counties. (Two for Lamar and three for Upson.)
There was about a 51% transport rate in Lamar and Upson that is now about 88%. The county was advised that Ameripro can move on a monthy basis of $68,500 per month. This comes to a yearly contract of $822,000 that renews annually for up to five years with a 3% raise each year.
It did not appear that all of the commissioners and the county attorney had seen the contract that Ameripro advised that they had sent to the county manager, but commissioners along with the county attorney hashed out at least some of what would be expected from Ameripro since Ameripro had not seen the contract that the county had provided to Veterans Transport two years ago. They were familiar with the requirements from the bidding process because they were a part of it and said that the requirements in other local counties were more stringent that what they had seen in the past bid.
Closing
Commissioner Tim Guy made a motion to pay $68,500 per month to Ameripro based on the emergency situation with Veterans Transport leaving the county on June 10, 2022. Commissioner Tim Daniel made the second.
Discussion reiterated $68,500 for a 5 year agreement. Will review in 6 months to ensure that the numbers match up with the amount that is being charged. Annual renewal. 3% added annually as well.
The motion was approved in a 4-1 vote with Commissioner James Jenkins dissenting.
Richardson advised that obtaining staff would be a challenge and pledged to move quickly to ensure that Pike County citizens do not do without an ambulance service in our county.
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