Why worry about response times for EMS when the result is that the patient is ultimately going to get dumped at a dismal one star rated hospital with quite possibly the worst ER in the entire country. I don’t get the “hurry up and get there so we can wait seemingly forever for woefully substandard health care” mentality? Residents would have been better served saving money and keeping the old ambulance servive until someday (hopefully) when there is a place worth being rushed to!

I for one want to say that this was not a waste of time, you managed to clarify some things that I wasn't aware of!

I did not realize that in last year's budget the $124 fire assessment only covered a small portion of the $35 million for the 2 fire districts and the balance came out of the general fund. I always felt it was unfair that I was paying the same fire assessment as Walmart, but now that I see that was only a small portion of the expense, commercial buildings are indeed paying more of a fair share. In the proposed budget, the general county assessment is being DECREASED, from 5.59 to 5.19.

The biggest challenge faced by the county commission is the VERY large increase in the fire budget, primarily from The Villages fire district, which has a proposed increase of almost 100 percent (from $17,934,640 last year to $34,636,054). We asked for a greatly improved ambulance service and this apparently is the price for that request. From looking at the budget, it would appear that the commission just received a lump sum request from the Villages fire district, as there wasn't a detailed breakdown as there was from the fire district for the rest of the county (which, by the way, had a modest increase from $18,884,269 to $24,240,265).

So where do we go from here? The commission has some difficult decisions. First, deciding how much we actually want to pay for improved service. If we want to keep these proposed funding levels, the money has to come from somewhere. If we keep the old system, do we apply a moderate increase to the $124 assessment per lot and increase the county assessment above and beyond the previous year? Or do we implement something like the new proposed system, where the fire assessment actually reflects the total cost of the services?

I'm not sure we pay our commissioners enough for these kinds of decisions!

So clearly you have not been paying attention to the news and you have not read the preceding posts.

Are you not aware that the 2 fire departments are taking over the ambulance service for the entire county, that they have to purchase ambulances and equipment and hire people?

And don't you know that the fire fee only pays a portion of the fire department costs. It also is a significant portion of our property tax payment. In fact, I think we should consider eliminating the fire fee and have it totally covered by the property tax.,

Thank you!
Just one clarification, VPSD presented a detailed breakout budget to the BOCC, the increase was greater than SCFEMS because
a) they have more ambulances than SCFEMS therefore greater costs involved,
b) they were expanding and adding 2 additional fire stations so staffing and operating costs were increasing for both fire protection and ambulance - the cost of the two new fire stations is not in their proposed budget, this is covered by the $4.08/month ($50/yr) that is included in the Amenity Fee Villagers pay each month that is now earmarked for capital improvements greater than $10,000.

The County staff, fire departments, and BOCC have some difficult decisions to make in the next few weeks. A lot of progress has been made since Tuesday evening's meeting towards overcoming this huge budget shortfall and softening the blow of this decision.

Several scenarios and strategies are being looked at for FY25 for funding the county fire department costs, these are still in the preliminary stages of discovery, one thing is very apparent at this point of all possible strategies, there is no "Someone Else" that is going to pay for this service.

Two years ago, the residents asked for better service, they got it.
Now residents have asked not to have to pay for this additional service, they got it.
Every decision has consequences so be careful what you ask for, you may get it.

I have never quoted my own post before, but I am now because I am baffled that no one has responded to it. My post highlights the huge elephant in the room that appears to be invisible. Apparently everyone is living in some kind of make believe fantasy world where response time actually matters? Why is everyone burying their heads in the sand and demanding faster service when there is a much bigger problem?

I get it that fixing The Village’s health care system is beyond the scope of both Villagers and the county commissioners, but increasing ambulance response time solves nothing as long as the much much much bigger problem exists! Efforts that actually do make a real difference, like the neighborhood defibrillator program, should be the focus of attention.

...

Better to recognize reality and act accordingly than to ignore reality and act like a fool…

Right! The Villages Hospital is sub-par. But, the ambulance service has life saving equipment manned by professional paramedics. With most emergencies, time is of the essence. Once you are stabilized, you can transfer to a hospital of your choosing. It is not imperative to stay at the Villages hospital.

If you find you despise the Villages hospital, move to another part of the Villages that is closer to a hospital that meets your standards. Everyone must fight their own battles and live with the choices they make.

You don’t think response time is important?? Yeah, OK. Just hope you don’t have a cardiac arrest. Or better yet a stroke where the window of opportunity to use thrombolytic therapy is about an hour

Since things have branched off a little... It is ironic that a place with a good number of very active healthy seniors has some of the worse healthcare options in the country. Would a better system allow us to remain active longer or when a major health incident happens is that the end ?

Well Doc, excuse me for having absolutely zero confidence in the Village’s Hospital. When you show up at the ER on your death bed in need of critical care, you wait in total agony for over 12 hours to ultimately get misdiagnosed, prescribed medication that does nothing to help your condition, get booted out the door after midnight to drive yourself home and die, and then get billed for the horrific experience, that will happen.

When I got to a real hospital in Gainesville the triage person took one look at me, put me in a room where a team of Doctors immediately evaluated me, and admitted me to critical care within minutes. If my wife didn’t drive about 1,360 non-stop miles south to pick me up and drag me to Gainesville, I would be dead now thanks to the Village’s Hospital. So yes, I’m not on board with first response time mattering when the patient is going to get dumped at the Villages Hospital.

We get it. You had a bad experience at The Villages Hospital. I’m sorry you had to go through what you did. But not everyone had the same experience you did. There are people that praise the treatment they received. Hijacking every thread you can to knock the hospital isn’t going to make it any better. Living in a community where the population is growing faster than the available medical services are is always a gamble. I hope you’re able to move on from this.

It might not be ironic at all; the large percentage of seniors in the population might be part of the reason for the healthcare options.

A lot of seniors means a lot of payments by medicare. If medicare truly does pay less than private insurance then that means less income for doctors who stay in this area. There are likely other factors in play (such as having three large cities close by) but it seems like this might play a part.

You’re comparing a level 1 trauma center to a glorified urgent care. lol.