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Originally Posted by Papa_lecki
I forget the timing of when the decision to leave AMR was made or considered. I do know AMR pre dates my time in the Villages.
How was fire and ambulance operated and paid for pre AMR? Was service acceptable? I wold guess the move to AMR was primarily to save money for the taxpayers. Did taxes go down - my guess NO.
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The decision to leave AMR was made around September 2021, prior to the IFD proposal. The decision was made because of perceived poor performance (long wait times) by AMR. The fire department was arriving on scene 15-20 minutes sooner than AMR. The solution, put EMS at the fire stations since they have good response times.
There was the accusation that AMR was costing the taxpayers a lot of money for mediocre service but I don't know that I ever saw any numbers on that. There was never a calculation that I saw for how much FD-based ambulance service would cost or what the budget difference would be.
So the BoCC voted to end AMR and allow VPSD and SCFD (renamed to SCFEMS) to provide ambulance service.
Fire service has been paid for by the $124 fee plus property taxes for at least the last five years. I heard somewhere that the $124 fee had not been changed since 2017 but I wasn't here at that time to see it. You could look at old Sumter County budget documents to see how much was spent on fire protection in previous years. I know the request this year was for significantly more than last year.