Vote Expected

The parishwide Ambulance Service Committee is expected to vote today on asking the Ruston Fire Department to come back to the negotiating table for rural emergency medical and rescue service.

“ It will definitely come before the committee,” panel Chairman Charlie Edward said Wednesday.

The committee meets at 9 a.m. at the Lincoln Parish Events Center to continue what so far has been a five-month discussion on how to provide ambulance and rescue service outside the city of Ruston when the jury’s contract with the RFD expires at midnight Dec. 31.

The committee currently has only two proposals for 2023: a $360,000 offer from Pafford EMS for ambulance service and a $643,000 proposal from the Lincoln Parish Fire Protection District.

Though Ruston was in the mix early on with a $645,604 annual proposal for both ambulance and rescue, the jury voted down the offer in July.

At the time, the fire district had not released its cost estimate.

But now that the jury is potentially looking at a $1 million bill for 2023, some committee members and jurors have said they want to talk to Ruston again.

Committee member Dr. Jackie White attempted to make a motion to that effect at the panel’s Aug. 26 meeting but was told Lewis Jones, the jury’s legal counsel, the motion was out of order because the item was not on the agenda.

This week, the item’s there.

But Edwards said Ruston Mayor Ronny Walker has already made the city’s position known, regardless of what the committee might do. Walker has said Ruston won’t return to the table unless the jury votes unanimously to ask that it come back.

That unanimous vote is unlikely based on a poll of jurors done by the Daily Leader last week. Only five said they definitely wanted Ruston to return, and they were split on the $645,604 price tag.

Meantime, a proposed contract with Pafford — should it be the committee’s recommendation — is nearing completion, Edwards said. Any agreement with the fire district will be in the form of a yet-to-be drafted cooperative endeavor agreement between the district and the jury.

Yet regardless of which agency eventually provides the services, the jury still has no plan for paying the bill.