A county-led agency has proposed privatizing the emergency medical dispatch services among its 15 recommendations in a draft report first released in October.
It is a recommendation that has been met with some opposition, including by Supervisor Monica Brown, who outlined her concerns in a letter she released Friday.
“I am strongly against the idea of privatizing the services that our local cities provide currently. I know that the level of emergency service provided by our emergency medical professionals is excellent. Removing dispatch from local control would result in a decrease in overall service delivery and impact safety,” Brown wrote in her response.
Brown also said she believes the recommendations and comments made by the local fire chiefs have all but been ignored.
“As I reviewed the report, it is clear the stakeholder input from the fire chiefs was not taken into consideration at all,” Brown noted in her letter, and specifically identifying the chiefs’ opposition to being dispatched by a commercial service.