Oklahoma Ambulance Service`s Spending Raises Official`s Concern
Oct. 22-- The city's ambulance service piled up a $6.6 million cash reserve this year and plans to spend more than half of that in coming years while it gives pay raises to top managers, spends $2.5 million expanding its building and pays more than $80,000 for lobbyists and public relations, a Tulsa World investigation shows.
The Emergency Medical Services Authority has also spent funds in past years on items including a $1,000 Christmas tree, a $3,200 charcoal grill, $1,500 office chairs and a $9,000 area rug, records show. Millions have been spent on remodeling projects, a landscaped park and parking lot with decorative brick archways.
EMSA is a government agency that manages ambulance service for more than 1 million people in Tulsa, Sand Springs, Jenks and Bixby as well as Oklahoma City and numerous suburbs in that area.
Clay Bird, a Tulsa city official who sits on the agency's board, said he voted to approve EMSA's budget in June -- his second month on the board -- without reading the 17-page budget first.
Bird said he wasn't aware the agency had a $6.6 million cash reserve at the time. That fund is now down to $4.1 million, including the cost of nine new ambulances.
EMSA receives about $4.8 million a year from a $3.64 monthly fee on Tulsans' utility bills.
Bird is the city of Tulsa's only representative on the board while Oklahoma City has two councilors sitting on it. Fire Chief Allen LaCroix left the board about a year ago, and no city of Tulsa official sat on the board for seven months until Bird joined the board, records show.
Read the complete story in Sunday's World.
Copyright 2011 - Tulsa World, Okla.
