Downstroke

Too many ambulances?
Butte County’s ambulance system works just fine and shouldn’t be disrupted. That’s the point Enloe Medical Center, Oroville Hospital and First Responder ambulance company made at a press conference Monday announcing they had sued Nor-Cal EMS, the regional agency that regulates medical services, over its permitting an additional ambulance company, Priority One, to operate in Butte County.

Enloe and First Responder own the two ambulance services in the county. Each has been assigned particular service areas. Allowing in other ambulance companies would “undermine the county’s express authority” to make such assignments, said Enloe CEO Dan Neumeister.

Dan Spiess, director of Nor-Cal EMS, said he welcomed the suit. His agency believes Butte is an open county, while Enloe and its allies believe it has a legitimate claim on restricting service. “The litigation is probably the best way to determine what path we’re going to take in the future.”

Hop in
At 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds, Chico State President Paul Zingg wouldn’t seem like a likely candidate to showcase engineering students’ winning entry in the Human Powered Vehicle Challenge West Coast Competition. But Zingg, after being helped into the tiny, tear-drop-shaped pod by students, took the three-wheeler around the track for an old-fashioned photo op.

The vehicle took an overall first place, besting 32 other universities at the competition held in San Luis Obispo last month. Eighteen students contributed to the project, and it was the first three-wheeler to win the competition, averaging speeds of 50 mph. Chico State took third place at last year’s competition, behind Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Missouri-Rolla.

All will graduate
Some 14 Chico high school students who hadn’t passed both portions of the state’s high school exit exam will now be able to graduate, thanks to an Alameda County judge’s decision last week that the requirement was illegal.

At Pleasant Valley High School, only two students—apart from special-education students, who are exempt from the exam requirement—failed to pass the English portion of the test, reported Assistant Principal John Shepherd. The number was a little higher at Chico High School, where seven failed in English and five in math, or less than 3 percent out of 430 seniors total.

Assistant Principal Judi Roth said Chico High was “adjusting just fine” to the judge’s order but regretted that affected students no longer would have incentive to improve their skills in their weak subjects.