With a bidding process for emergency medical transportation services in San Diego caught up in litigation, a reluctant City Council Monday approved a five-year contract extension with Rural/Metro Ambulance.
The deal buys time for city officials to work through legal snags that have prevented them from opening up the ambulance contract to competitive bidding.
Councilman Scott Sherman said he would have preferred seeing a request for bids go out so he could see what other companies are offering.
"Cheapest isn't always best," Sherman said. He said he can't tell if the city is getting the best contract if other firms can't bid.
The city and Rural/Metro, which sends ambulances to emergency scenes in conjunction with the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, have had a complicated relationship over the last several years.
The two sides once worked together in a joint venture, but that dissolved after a 2011 city audit alleged accounting irregularities. A later investigation exonerated the ambulance provider, but the partnership was converted into a typical vendor contract.
The city has worked with Rural/Metro under a couple of short-term contract extensions while officials prepared to take bids from competitors. The contract expires at the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
According to a city staff report, litigation over California's complex EMS rules could take several years, necessitating the longer term this time around.
The report said state authorities believe it is up to the county of San Diego, as the local EMS agency, to issue the Request for Proposals that would initiate the bidding. The county plans to appeal the state decision, which could wind up in the courts and, thus, take a long time, the report said.
The contract extension includes requirements for improved service levels and response times that would have been included in the RFP.
The city said Rural/Metro, which contracts for ambulance services with local governments around the nation, has agreed to spend around $10.6 million over the length of the contract to replace 47 aging ambulances, and purchase 160 cardiac monitors and mobile patient record devices — of which 100 would go into SDFRD vehicles.
For patients, transport fees that range from almost $1,500 to nearly $1,700 per trip would go up 9 percent to 14 percent under the new contract. A basic non-emergency transport fee would decline 43 percent to $850 under the proposal.
The council members also criticized low wages paid to Rural/Metro employees.
Shelly Hudelson, with the National Association of Government Employees EMS union, said the company pays beginning EMTs $10 an hour, and paramedics $13.59 an hour, placing them below the wages of many fast food workers.
"These people deal with life and death daily," Hudelson said.
The council denied pleas by several Rural/Metro employees to delay approval of the extension for two months, in order to bring the company back to the bargaining table.
Michael Simsonsen of Rural/Metro said the company planned to restart negotiations, and has offered employees an 18 percent raise over four years.
