Hall Pulls Out of Pine Mountain

By Patric Hedlund

Letters, emails and newsprint carried one-way information on September 10 to the Pine Mountain community: Bakersfield Mayor Harvey Hall had decided to close the weekend station maintained for 18 months by Hall Ambulance Service in the mountain village.

It is nearly impossible to find anyone locally who has had an actual discussion with the businessman-mayor or his representatives about agreements and what has changed. PMCPOA Manager Dan Rainey says he hasn’t had such a conversation. PMCPOA Board of Directors chair Jack Throckmorton says he hasn’t either. Edie Stafford, a longtime activist on behalf of emergency preparedness, Emergency Task Force member and PMCPOA board member, said she hadn’t been contacted.

Questions asked of Hall Ambulance service by The Mountain Enterprise beginning September 5 about the company’s plans for discontinuing service in Pine Mountain remained unanswered as of September 12. Spokesperson Mark Corum (who did not answer direct questions from The Mountain Enterprise on September 5, 6 and 9 about a planned date for a pull-out), was quoted in a Bakersfield newspaper on Sept. 10 that a "change in direction with new leadership for the Pine Mountain Club community" triggered the change. Hall, it was reported, "said in a news release" that "keeping the station open required the continued support of everyone involved." But it does not appear that a survey of community sentiment about whether they do or don’t support Hall’s business plans for the area was taken.

Former PMCPOA Board Chair Gita Nelson is the only person from the community we’ve discovered who spoke with Hall (and his lobbyist) last month. She said it was the only conversation she’s "ever" had with him and that he sounded as if he’d already made up his mind to withdraw at that time.

The primary change that has taken place is that on August 22, community members told the administrator of the Local Agency Formation Committee (LAFCO) that they wished to take a 60 day extension before LAFCO considered allowing an item to go on the general election ballot to authorize converting $550,000 from Pine Mountain’s County Service Area-40 fund toward building an extra wing on a new fire station.

A community task force had worked on that goal, but two unexpected events raised wide community questions. The first was the appearance on the proposal to LAFCO—placed at the request of Supervisor Watson according to county sources—of a $125 per parcel annual "ambulance tax" to be included with the CSA-40 re-purposing question.

The goal, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Director Ross Elliott explained, was to raise in the neighborhood of $329,000 a year to pay for an ambulance presence. Because task force members had not been consulted, and were surprised at the appearance of the tax proposal, discussions as to ‘Who is making the decisions?’ arose in the community.

Under current structures, they learned, it is the board of supervisors in Bakersfield, not the task force nor the PMCPOA board which is authorized to decide such matters.

The second surprise was that a proposal had been submitted by Hall’s company to EMS two months before it was revealed to the community, stating that Hall wished to have an ambulance bay, staff lodging and facilities inside the community’s new fire house, in the wing built with the community’s money, "at no cost to Hall Ambulance." The subsidy by the community began to appear significant. According to Throckmorton and Stafford, it was not any one of these issues alone that caused the call for a new community survey and fact-based dialogue before going forward with the ballot question. It was that the moves appeared to be orchestrated "in a less than transparent fashion," with decisions being made in Bakersfield between "political cronies" about life-and-death issues for Pine Mountain residents.

"Mr. Hall should not be surprised that questions are raised," Rainey said, "because an open dialogue hasn’t yet happened…[and] there can be an appearance of conflict of interest when you have a mayor with a business like this contracting with the county." Rainey also said that the issue of a firefighter/paramedic and ambulance presence for medical transport are two separate issues. Hall personnel have frequently asserted that it is a "one or the other" choice.

The rural community appreciates Hall’s medical transport services, but seeks the security of knowing there is a paramedic available to stabilize patients while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

This is part of the September 14, 2007 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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