ST. GEORGE — A suggestion was recently made to the city of St. George to consider reviewing and updating its ordinance governing ambulance service to reflect less-stringent state law, prompting the city to commission a study on the performance of its current ambulance service provider. Meanwhile, the issue has played into ongoing disagreements between the mayor and another City Council member.
Specifically, Gold Cross Ambulance, the current emergency medical services provider for the area, is asking the city to allow it to go from staffing ambulances with two paramedics to staffing them with one paramedic and one advanced emergency medical technician.
Two paramedics was the state rule when Gold Cross took over ambulance service in St. George, but that law has since changed to a one-paramedic, one-EMT model.
“Maybe it’s time to take a look at the ordinance and update it,” Gold Cross president Mike Moffitt told St. George News.
A question of staffing
A suggestion for St. George by Gold Cross to change to the staffing model came about for two reasons, Moffitt said. During the pandemic, paramedics who became sick with COVID-19 would be laid up for several days in quarantine, causing staffing issues. Another problem that has arisen is a shortage of paramedics across the state and nationwide, he said.
St. George revising its ordinance to reflect the state regulation would help relieve some of the staffing pressure and even allow Gold Cross to add two new ambulances for additional coverage in the city, Moffitt said.
“That would help out tremendously with staffing,” he said.
Gold Cross currently maintains six ambulances across the St. George area. Four are dedicated to 911 calls 24/7 and are staffed by two paramedics each. The other two ambulances are primarily used for interfacility transports, like going between a rest home and the hospital, and are able to run under different staffing rules. One of these ambulances is staffed with a paramedic and EMT, while the other is staffed by two EMTs.
Keeping two paramedics per ambulance is also a bit of a waste, Moffitt said, as one of them is driving the ambulance rather tending to a patient.
St. George Mayor Michele Randall said in a statement earlier this month that the suggested change means Gold Cross would in effect be reducing the level of ambulance service they committed to providing the city since 2013.
Instead of addressing a potential ordinance revision as an upcoming agenda item, Randall said the city is having a third party review Gold Cross’ performance to see if a “reduction in service” is the best course of action and whether or not the company is holding up its end of its contract with the city.
“The City is evaluating whether the current service provider is meeting its obligation for the highest level of service, or whether or not there may be other viable options,” the mayor said. “If there has been a failure in the current ambulance service as suggested, then the current provider would be in breach of its contract.”
At that point, potential options, including putting out a “request for proposal” for other ambulance services to submit their bids to serve the city, could be considered.
However, the city will not make such moves until after the final study is produced. Once that information is obtained, “possible options and solutions” will be placed on an upcoming City Council agenda for discussion and action, Randall stated.
“If they study the service provided and the service levels, they’re not going to find any issue in the ability of our paramedics,” Moffitt said. “It’s as good as anything you’ll get in the state. It’s top of the line. We’ve done nothing but provide excellent service for St. George.”
‘Absolutely absurd’
Despite Randall’s statement the city wants to look at a study before moving forward, it is the opinion of one St. George City Council member that the process is too slow and is putting residents at risk.
“We have several instances in the city right now where we’re at a level zero – which means there are no ambulances available unless we call for outside help,” Councilwoman Michelle Tanner said during the council’s Sept. 29 meeting. “That’s a matter of life and death.”
The ambulance issue was one of many Tanner said she had requested to be put on an agenda yet hadn’t seen because she felt her concerns were being unduly ignored by the mayor and others.
This led to a public and sometimes heated exchange between Tanner and the mayor. In response, the city attorney said Gold Cross and the city had already been meeting in some capacity to discuss the issue while they waited on the study results.
“It’s absolutely absurd,” Tanner said of the city appearing to postpone a matter of public safety for the sake of a study. She then accused the mayor of having personal reasons to want to see Gold Cross fail and be replaced.
“You have a huge conflict of interests in this,” Tanner said to the mayor.
“No, I don’t,” Randall said in response. “This has everything to do with their contract. They have been in breach of the contract numerous times. It’s time to do something about that.”
Conflict of interest?
The accusation of Randall having a conflict of interest involving Gold Cross goes back a decade ago when Dixie Ambulance, the company she and her family ran, closed due to Gold Cross Ambulance being awarded the state-issued EMS license for the St George area.
Gold Cross, which is based in Salt Lake City, applied to the state’s Bureau of Emergency Medical Services in 2011 for the 911 EMS licenses Dixie Ambulance held at the time. The matter would move on to an administrative hearing in December 2012, with the judge overseeing the process eventually ruling against Dixie Ambulance and granting Gold Cross Ambulance the state license.
Randall would go into local politics soon after and won election to the City Council in 2013.
“It is my conviction that the Mayor’s historic conflict with this very public situation should warrant her to recuse herself entirely from this matter, instead of directing staff to conduct statistical studies, which are cited as cause for not addressing the ordinance and public safety,” Tanner said in an Oct. 2 statement she released on Facebook.
As for Randall’s dealings with Gold Cross since becoming mayor, Moffitt said he’s felt like she sometimes had an agenda against his company due to what happened with Dixie Ambulance. When he hoped to arrange face-to-face meetings with mayor, he said she was never available.
“Under (former Mayor Jon) Pike, we had great relations with the city, with the administration,” Moffitt said. “Since Michele Randall’s been mayor, I have not been able to get one offered meeting with her. I’ve tried to meet with the city manager a couple of times and that’s been postponed and postponed, saying he wants the mayor to be in on the meeting, and yet she’s never available.
“I feel there’s a strain there, so I would say that’s (an anti-Gold Cross agenda) not an impossibility,” he said.
Randall responded to St. George News Tuesday evening regarding issues raised by Tanner and Moffitt.
“Mike Moffit has never requested to meet with me since I’ve been Mayor!” she stated. “The only correspondence I’ve had with Gold Cross, since becoming Mayor, was Gene Moffit sending me a flower arrangement congratulating me on becoming Mayor.”
The mayor further stated she has no need to recuse herself from the ambulance discussion as she and her family have nothing to gain financially from the issue.
“If I had the desire I could have gotten rid of Gold Cross as a Council Member where I had a vote and had other Council Members that would have agreed to remove Gold Cross,” Randall said. “This never happened because I had no lingering resentment.”
Though she was on the City Council in 2014 when the city negotiated its contract with Gold Cross, Randall said she was not a part of the process. That is when Gold Cross pledged four ambulances with two paramedics each to cover the city.
“They have not increased their number of ambulances since 2014 even though we’ve had exponential growth,” she said.
For Gold Cross’ part, Moffitt said they will continue to staff the two paramedics per ambulance if that is what is desired from St. George and will adapt accordingly while continuing to provide “top of the line” service to the city and surrounding area.
“It’s not a life or death situation,” he said. “It’s not going to affect the service that we provide. But I felt it (the city’s ordinance) is something that it was time to be looked at.”
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