The Montesano City Council approved an emergency loan for the city’s fire department during the Dec. 8 council meeting.
Following an update from Fire Chief Corey Rux, the council unanimously approved the three-year loan of $100,000.
The city’s fire department relies on EMS transports to generate revenue, however changes to other institutions coupled with fewer transports overall have left the department facing a shortfall.
“This isn’t an ideal circumstance, but when you’re forecasting transports, sometimes these things happen,” Rux said. “Another issue is with Grays Harbor Community Hospital, we were doing MRI transports. They have their own imaging now so they’re no longer doing that. That’s new this year, and that’s 45 transports right there that we’re no longer doing.”
The department has made 90 fewer transports this year than during the same period last year. The operating shortfall is about $30,000.
“There are just some things that have come up that are out of our control and they’ve put us in this precarious position,” Rux said.
When asked, Rux said the shortfall was not an “anomaly.”
“It’s something that’s plagued us for a few years, and one of the biggest things I’ve recognized over the last few years of being the fire chief is the need to capture inner-facility transfer requests that come in, because that’s really our bread and butter,” Rux said. “We’ve struggled to do that just by sheer numbers — our manpower numbers, we have five paramedics, and that’s a lot of workload to distribute among five paramedics.