County wants more information on $109K ambulance charge from city

Published 10:44 am Thursday, November 10, 2016

Warren County supervisors say they’ll wait for more information before deciding whether to pay a bill for Vicksburg Fire Department ambulance runs totaling more than $109,000.

The board discussed the bill at a special work session Wednesday. County administrator John Smith said the unitemized bill totaling $109,800 involved 366 previously unbilled ambulance calls at $300 per run from October 2015 to June 2016 discovered during a recent audit of the ambulance runs by the city.

Email newsletter signup

Sign up for The Vicksburg Post's free newsletters

Check which newsletters you would like to receive
  • Vicksburg News: Sent daily at 5 am
  • Vicksburg Sports: Sent daily at 10 am
  • Vicksburg Living: Sent on 15th of each month

Under an agreement between the city and the county approved in September, the county agreed to pay the city $350 per ambulance run this year each time the ambulance leaves a station, and $250,000 for rescue truck service. The bill was for runs made during fiscal 2015. Unbilled runs were one of the sticking points between the city and the county during talks for the new agreement.

Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said he would not comment until he learns the supervisors’ official decision on the bills.

Supervisors President Richard George said the county wants an itemized record of the runs.

“We’re going to have to have more information to make a decision on that one way or the other,” he said after the meeting. “This was a one-sheet invoice with an amount of money on it. That doesn’t tell us a lot. I hope we’ll get more information from them before we decide. We need more information so we can make an informed decision.”

Smith said the county has never received an itemized bill from the city.

“All I can do is look at history and see everything is within reason, but you would think the person making the bill would be accurate in their billing.”

Wednesday morning, sentiment seemed to favor not paying the city.

“Send it back to them. I wouldn’t pay them a dime,” District 2 Supervisor William Banks said.

George said the county is bound by its agreement with the city.

“If the contract says bill us quarterly, timely — that’s not happened. It may have started happening, but it has not happened (in the past),” he said. “Very often we were billed at any time, but we did pay what we were billed eventually, when we got a bill. Not because we didn’t pay timely, we weren’t billed timely.”

He said the county cannot pay “for bills that we have no timely evidence.”

In the past, he said, there were times when the county was billed and city officials realized they made a mistake and sent a second bill with missed runs.

“That’s possible. But to that magnitude (366 runs over nine months), I don’t think so,” he said.

About John Surratt

John Surratt is a graduate of Louisiana State University with a degree in general studies. He has worked as an editor, reporter and photographer for newspapers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post staff since 2011 and covers city government. He and his wife attend St. Paul Catholic Church and he is a member of the Port City Kiwanis Club.

email author More by John