Lethbridge city council will send a letter to the province requesting more information about ongoing emergency medical services contract costs. At Tuesday’s council meeting, councillors voted to pen a letter, along with six other municipalities that use integrated fire-EMS models, to advocate for the province to work with them as partners on EMS delivery. The province is asking municipalities with integrated services to either continue with the model but pay anything above the EHS benchmark cost or a procurement process will begin to secure an outside contract provider at a reduced cost. The province says the decision is to save money, but the city says it has asked multiple times for financial data to back up those claims to no avail. “Still no number,” said Mayor Blaine Hyggen. “That’s the most tough part of it—we don’t know what the dollar figure is, and so we’re going to need to know what that is before we can make any decisions, for sure.” While the city continues to figure out its next steps, the province has agreed to extend its current decision deadline to May 31.
