CLEARWATER — St. Petersburg has dropped a legal challenge against Pinellas County over efforts to reduce the amount of funding to the city for emergency medical services.
Moreover, the two sides have agreed the city will receive $11.9 million in EMS funding in the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The news emerged Tuesday at a County Commission meeting.
The amount St. Petersburg will get is about $1.2 million less than the city is receiving this fiscal year, county officials said. It's also $77,500 more than the county had initially budgeted for the city.
Assistant County Administrator James Dates said the additional funds were justified and resulted from revisions to early cost estimates. The difference, he said, will be made up from county EMS reserves.
"I want to commend the staff and really the city of St. Petersburg that we've actually reached this point and avoided litigation," County Commissioner Ken Welch said during the meeting.
"I think we have come to a very reasonable compromise," said St. Petersburg's Deputy Mayor Tish Elston. "And it took a lot of hard work and a lot of give and take on both sides."
The cost savings were achieved through cutting at the administrative level, Elston said, and the number of emergency vehicles in the city will not be reduced, meaning response times should not suffer.
Elston and county leaders expect talks to continue in the future over how to further reduce EMS spending, but she expressed satisfaction with the agreement. "That's the issue, where does this go from here?" Elston said. "But for 2010, we can assure our citizens they will be well served."
Confronted with reduced property tax revenue, the county has been renegotiating the amount of funding provided to Pinellas' 19 fire rescue districts, which deliver emergency medical services.
When the effort began, county officials forecast an $18 million deficit in EMS funding next year. Tuesday, officials said their efforts to craft new agreements had eliminated that projected deficit.
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