Santa Cruz Considers Change in ambulance services

Changes to ambulance service might soon be coming to the City of Santa Cruz. The city is now taking bids from other agencies to take over the service including its own fire department.

The last time a new ambulance service came to Santa Cruz County was more than 14 years ago. That’s when American Medical Response or AMR took over. Now the Santa Cruz Fire Department hopes to get the job.

“This is the first step to really moving us in that direction,” said fire chief Jim Crawley.

It would be a new service for the Santa Cruz City Fire Department. Though they already provide several, community ambulance transport is their next goal.

“The one thing that we don’t do here in Santa Cruz County is provide that vehicle the ambulance to move somebody from point A to point B,” Crawley said.

That job has belonged to a private company, American Medical Response, since September of 2003.

Every decade the county gives an opportunity to different organizations to bid on providing that service.

“We would be the local respondent or bidder versus these larger corporations that have headquarters throughout the country and even internationally,” Crawley said.

The chief went before the city council Tuesday night asking for a consultant to help his department start the bidding process.

“We’re going to look at the feasibility more in depth, we’re going to look at the impacts to the city and other city departments,” said the fire chief.

Frawley says that if his department’s bid is accepted, a number of jobs would be opening up and some of the first people to be considered for those positions are those working with AMR right now.

“They’re local Santa Cruz people and so we definitely want to offer employment to them,” Frawley said.

Being local is what Chief Frawley says is his department’s greatest asset.

“We know what needs to happen and really how to innovate and make things better overall and just having the extra funds to reinvent in the community is going to be fantastic,” Frawley said.

Each organization has a tight timeline if they want to bid. They have until the October 24th city council meeting to let the city know they’re bidding and by October of next year the new service will need to be up and running.