As expected, Warren County signed deals for shared services with the City of Vicksburg Wednesday, including this year’s contentious issue of ambulance service.

The county will pay a flat $300 per run of any type of ambulance call that occurs outside city limits, a change from the previous agreements that had the county paying set rates and then overage fees if costs-per-run were determined to be higher.

Types of responses the county previously paid for were for life support and rescue. This year the county was to pay $350,000 for such runs. Trips made for basic transfer of patients from their homes or nursing homes to medical appointments were not billed to the county.

Tallies compiled by the Vicksburg Fire Department show an average of about 400 non-city responses per quarter. At $300 per response, that translates to $480,000 per year, or an approximate increase of $130,000. In its budget for 2006-07, the county planned for an increase of more than $300,000.

City planning officials have said the $300 figure is based on what the city loses per run. About 55 percent of the cost of providing the service and keeping it out of the private market were recovered through public and private insurance. The current contract predicts about 62 percent of costs will be recouped.

Efforts toward stemming that loss have slowly begun on the city end, beginning with the firing of Kay, Marley and Associates, located in Vicksburg, as one of its local debt collectors.

The city has received bids from three out-of-state companies to take over the job, but have not opened them.

The city employs two agencies, one to bill Medicare, Medicaid and other public and private insurers and one to collect from those who do not respond to the initial bills.

Healthcare Consultants, the agency that sends initial bills to insurers, was retained.

Other agreements on which supervisors signed off dealt with the assessment and collection of taxes, management of E-911 emergency dispatch and the sale or redemption of property sold for nonpayment of taxes. Those three agreements remain largely unchanged. All four were signed by city officials Monday.