The council approved a set of three-year contracts valued around $5 million to augment emergency response services.
Prior to Tuesday’s 6-2 vote, the supplemental ambulance agreements were held back for about a month amid discord over the proposed contract term and how feasible it is for the city to handle the services on its own. District 2 Council Member Angela Whitfield-Calloway and District 5 Council Member Renata Miller voted no on the matter.
Miller said she’s concerned that the city is continuing to outsource services instead of committing to building its own public safety capacity and workforce.
“I am charged with helping to find jobs,” she said on Tuesday.
District 7 Council Member Denzel Anton McCampbell voted yes but said he’s not inclined to take the same action in the future. He said he supported the contracts on Tuesday because residents depend on quality and timely service during emergencies, but wants to see Detroiters prioritized and services brought in-house.
“We need to see more Detroiters employed by the fire department,” McCampbell said.
The Detroit fire administration has said that the department would need about $20 million in upfront costs to bring its EMS services fully in-house, and even if the funding could be identified, the turnaround for more city-owned and operated rigs would take years.
The timetable and price tag have become a talking point in recent weeks as the council debated the controversial contracts.
Several council members and the fire union advocated for shorter, one-year agreements with the hopes of a quick ramp-up on staffing and equipment. The department has 498 members who are currently trained to work on an ambulance.
Fire Commissioner Charles Simms, in a recent letter to council members, provided a framework plan for a potential EMS expansion and long-term in-house EMS service.
A preliminary analysis conducted by DFD and the city’s budget office compared the continuation of supplemental ambulance contracts with an immediate full in-house expansion sufficient to replace the current supplemental model.
Ambulance procurement is currently estimated at approximately 18-24 months from order to deployment. Rigs have a four-year operational lifecycle, the document obtained by BridgeDetroit notes, requiring ongoing replacement and the net cost per ambulance is $1.1 million.
Other challenges outlined in Simms’ memo include an anticipated $16-20 million needed for facility and annex expansions, $18-20 million in fleet maintenance and apparatus needs, as well as undefined, but anticipated, increases for training and overtime.
The fire department has recommended a phased planning approach rather than a large-scale operational transition.
“The current supplemental contract model results in an estimated annual recurring cost of approximately $1.75 million,” Simms wrote in the May 19 letter to council members. “All three proposed vendors have made written commitments to prioritize the hiring of Detroit residents in partnership with Detroit at Work for the contracts.”
Detroit Fire Department Second Deputy Commissioner Derek Hillman has said the supplemental contracts have aided the city with about 25% of the call volume and helped bring Detroit’s EMS response time down from over eight minutes for the most urgent runs to about seven minutes and 20 seconds. The national average is about nine minutes, he noted.
The department has 26 ambulances on the road 24 hours a day. The contracts with Hart EMS, AmeriPro EMS and Superior Air-Ground Ambulance Service, Inc., bring four more full-time rigs into the mix. The remainder of the supplemental ambulances are deployed on peak shifts. The city responds to 450 medical calls each day and, of those, over 300 patients are transported via EMS, Hillman said during a recent meeting of the council’s Public Health and Safety subcommittee.
Jeff Pegg, vice president of the Detroit Fire Fighter Association, twice appeared before the council over the past month, urging members to press Mayor Mary Sheffield’s administration for one-year contract extensions with supplemental EMS providers or to turn them down outright.
Pegg has said that DFD can provide better service to the citizens and should use its own members to build up the department.
“Please do not be alarmed that you will not have coverage,” Pegg, who represents about 1,200 men and women in Local 344, told the council during a recent formal session. “You will 100% have coverage in the city, and there will be our members that respond to all emergencies in the city, including medical runs.”
Council members, DFD and the mayor’s administration have all expressed a desire to work on a plan that would allow ambulance services to eventually be handled in-house.
