Cottages in Yachats. Photo: Joe Mabel, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Yachats Rural Fire Protection District now owns the ambulance it has staffed for decades, and its interim chief says the service should bring in $160,000 to $190,000 a year for the district before supplies.
The handover
Interim fire chief Jeff Mathia told the district’s board Monday that the transfer of assets from the nonprofit South Lincoln Ambulance was finished last week. “We 100 percent own the ambulance,” Mathia said, according to the Lincoln Chronicle. The district also took over the licenses, the vehicle title, the equipment and $11,000 in cash reserves.
Lincoln County commissioners approved the reassignment of the ambulance service area last month. It runs from seven miles south of Yachats north to Wakonda Beach Road. County records show the area, known as ASA 5, had been assigned to the South Lincoln Ambulance Association for July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2027, under a county order. The district’s October board packet shows it had received its ambulance service license from the Oregon Health Authority and was targeting Nov. 1 for the switch.
The money
Billing now runs through the fire district. Mathia said the first three transports have gone out for billing. The Medicare application is still pending, and because the effective date is Nov. 1, the district expects to be paid for those runs once it is approved.
After reviewing years of South Lincoln’s finances, Mathia said he believes the ambulance will net the district $160,000 to $190,000 a year before supplies. He said labor is already covered because Yachats firefighter-paramedics are the ones staffing it. The new costs are maintenance and fuel, and the district’s insurance bill goes up by about $2,300 a year.
What it could mean for taxes
The district gets most of its operating money from a tax base of 29 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, a 2022 local option levy of $1.59 per $1,000 and a 2023 local option levy of 61 cents per $1,000 that expires in 2028. In 2025-26 the district collected about $1.8 million in tax revenue.
The $1.59 levy expires in 2027. Mathia said the ambulance income may mean the district only has to ask voters to renew it, not raise it. Board president Doug Myers cautioned that the numbers would need to be certain first, because the other local option levy is “already locked in.”
Marnie Holcomb is the editor and publisher of Oregon Coast Daily News and covers Lincoln County government and community life.
