LaFayette Council meets for work session at new city hall

BY JOHN BRICE

THE LAFAYETTE SUN

LAFAYETTE — Members of the LaFayette City Council were joined by Mayor Kenneth Vines, City Clerk Louis Davidson and LaFayette Fire Chief Jim Doody for a work session at the new city hall on Thursday, March 12. Taking high priority in the conversations was a discussion regarding the expenses and income related to operations in the Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department. Chief Doody briefed the council on the latest developments.

“This past year we have billed $1.4 million but have only collected $546,000 — but we have a potential for revenue increase of $900,000 with Senate Bill 269 and rate increases for transport,” he said. “If you look at the far column on the right where it shows over 180 days, we are still owed 459,186.20.”

Doody went on to clarify some of the fiscal trends affecting his department.

“This is as of today, which is the highest we have billed since I have been here from March 12 of last year to March 12 of this year,” he said. “I can change that to budget year, I just wanted to show that the rate of billing has gone up compared to when I got here. When I got here, it was maybe $900,000 — we have already exceeded that. Our new billing rates went into effect in February which pretty much doubles what we charge.”

Clerk Davidson expressed his own concerns over a projected increase in revenue for the city from emergency medical services billing.

“My concern is we project an additional $400,000, which if we project $400,000 in additional revenue, guess what we are going to do on the expense side. We are going to spend that $400,000,” he said. “Then we get to the end of the budget year, and we end up hitting numbers that we normally hit, and now have got a $400,000 hole, and then we have got some problems.”

Doody shared the factors that impacted the billing and collections for emergency medical services.

“These are right off of the EMSMC site that shows the increase in call volume and cost reimbursement,” he said. “Remember we started the rate increase one February so we will be a month behind. When the government shut down, medicare and medicaid were paying out on an average anywhere from 30 to 45 days. So we were 30 to 45 days behind. They have gotten back to what the normal was where I can go into an account and look so I can tell you exactly who and what is owed to us by who and how much. There is a lot of money sitting out there. The municipal intercept service thing that we talked about, we can incorporate that as well to go after every penny that we can get back. We cannot continue to operate at the level that we are operating for free.”