Shelbyville Common Council approves flat fee to provide ambulance service within Shelby County

Tuesday, December 3, 2024 at 8:22 PM

The City of Shelbyville provides ambulance service to all of Shelby County. How the city will get paid for that service will change in 2025.

On Monday at City Hall, the Shelbyville Common Council approved an Ambulance Interlocal Agreement with county government officials that will require the county to pay the city $1.1 million in the 2025 calendar year, broken into two installments of $550,000, to continue the service.

The flat fee will end years of contentious negotiations between the two entities over every dollar and cent billed to the county government.

“The ambulance (service) in all of Shelby County is run by the City of Shelbyville and, previously and currently, we are doing a joint agreement with (Shelby County), who is paying fees as we go and we are arguing over fees for hours at a time, month by month, to figure out who owes this and who owes that,” explained Shelbyville Mayor Scott Furgeson (photo). “So, we came up with the idea of instead of wasting everybody’s time doing that we would come up with a figure and see if the county would agree to it. I approached the county probably back in May and they thought it was a great idea. They didn’t want to see these things happening.

“Since we are providing the service, we set the fee at what we thought it was. We sat down with Mr. (Scott) Asher (the city’s clerk-treasurer) and came up with a number that is sustainable for us. It will make everybody’s life easier so there is not a need to squabble over $10 here and $10 there. It’s a flat number that they will agree to pay us.”

Councilwoman Linda Sanders (photo), a former member of the Shelby County Council, agreed that the interlocal agreement will streamline billing.

“I think this makes this very simple and very clear,” she said. “I know the 17 years I was on the county council the topic always came up. There was fighting over pennies. I think this is a wonderful opportunity for both sides.”

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