Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services Employee Association

The Board of the Austin/Travis County Emergency Medical Services Employees Association (A/TCEMSEA) unanimously opposed the City Manager’s Executive Budget for lack of funding Emergency Medical Services (EMS) response resources.

“We are very concerned about this situation. It puts the public in danger by not allowing us to achieve minimum response times and that’s not what our mission is,” stated Steve Stewart, president of A/TCEMSEA. “EMS management, the employees and our employee association have been diligently working for over the last few years to help the city with their shortfall, while our budget gets significantly cut and now we are lacking resources– which affects our ability to protect the public.”

“We have squeezed out everything we can and as our population grows, it is important to add ambulances to meet the stringent standard of care the citizens of Austin and Travis County deserve,” Stewart continued. “Our employees have stepped up every time the City has asked and we voted overwhelmingly to give up pay with an understanding and hope that the City would utilize this money to help EMS improve their service to the public.”

The City of Austin’s 2009-2010 budget cut nearly $1 million of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) budget; of which A/TCEMSEA acquiesce to most of those cuts. A/TCEMSEA renegotiated their current contract earlier this month and gave up $615,109 in raises this year, a savings to the city of over $2.3 million over the length of the contract, according to City of Austin (COA) calculations. The EMS contract renegotiation vote passed with over
88% of the association members voting to give up their raises to help the city budget shortfall.

In addition, A/TCEMSEA recently pushed for a fee increase, approved by the City Council last month, which will bring in an additional $3.7 million this year, which goes directly into the City’s general fund. Unfortunately, this added revenue will not be used for necessary additional EMS resources. According to the COA Executive Budget Summary, EMS’s total contribution to the City’s Budget (from revenue generated) is $26,915,982, which is 61.5% of EMS’s $43.7 million total budget.

Currently, A/TCEMS has 30 ambulances and 2 peak load units to cover 1,700 square mile area of Austin/Travis County. Over 1.2 million people live in Travis County and are covered by EMS. Call volume for EMS services this year is expected to reach over 110,000 calls. A/TCEMS has not been allocated a new response resource since 2007.