On why Sacramento leaders want you to take more ambulance rides

In Sacramento, it’s a ghoulish financial truth that what’s catastrophic for one of the city’s residents can be quite good for municipal coffers.

Consider the brutal scene that unfolded early on the morning of February 17 in the Valley Hi-North Laguna neighborhood: According to Sacramento Police Department logs, that’s where a woman later identified as Mercedes Ibarra-castro allegedly stabbed her female friend and the friend’s 14-year-old son after the youth apparently said something to upset Ibarra-castro. Both victims sustained major injuries, and the mother required an ambulance ride to the hospital.

Ka-ching.

For every ambulance transport the Sacramento Fire Department conducts, the city is owed an average of $1,700. (It collects only about $436 from private-insurance companies, Medicaid and the uninsured, but that’s another story.)

But a funny thing happened through the first six months of the 2013-2014 fiscal year, which ends in July: People stopped getting hurt.

According to internal figures, the department projects it’ll be down about a thousand ambulance rides from its annual clip of 36,000 transports. That dip, coupled with the city’s inflated revenue forecast, resulted in an anticipated shortfall of $1.6 million to the fire department’s “advanced life support” program, a recent midyear budget report revealed.

“We can’t induce people to take the ambulance more, and we don’t want to,” interim Fire Chief Dan Haverty told SN&R.

The bean counters at City Hall have a slightly different take.

“I guess it’s a good thing if fewer people are being transported,” Councilman Steve Cohn said during a hearing on the city’s fiscal affairs on February 11.

“Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” said City Manager John Shirey. “Of course, it does affect our revenues.”

And how.

The shortages represent nearly half of a $2.17 million shortfall anticipated for the department by the end of the current fiscal year.

Additionally, the Department of Public Works eyed a $1 million deficit, resulting from a projected decrease in annual ticket citations, from 181,644 the previous fiscal year to 178,085 this one. Overall, the city has witnessed a 20 percent decline in issued parking tickets since 2009. That’s in line with what nine other top ticketing California cities experienced during the same period, according to the firm that manages them, Inglewood Citation Management Services.

A city staff report conjectured that the economic downturn resulted in fewer incidents of illegal parking.

In an attempt to stem those losses, the city’s parking division plans to hire six additional enforcement officers to increase response times, procure up to 6,000 wireless smart meters that will make paying for parking easier, and cut the citation-review process from eight months to 90 days, the staff report states.

When it comes to the ambulance ride shortage, there’s nothing much the city can do but set aside money to cover the projected shortfall and hope.

“People are more prone to accidents and illnesses in the second half [of the fiscal year]. But, nevertheless, we project that we’ll end the year in a deficit position,” Shirey told council members.

Part of the problem is the city sped up collections of ambulance-service fees before the end of the last fiscal year, then forgot it did so, thus inflating the forecast for 2013-2014. “But there’s no free lunch, right?” Shirey remarked.

Through February 20, police logs show 29 people received ambulance transports this month, though that figure is likely much higher because the department only records serious incidents.

Even if ambulance rides and parking citations do see a second-half spike, the resulting revenue would be relative a drop in the municipal pail.

Overall, city finance officials identified $10.45 million worth of adjustments needing to be made, including $2.1 million to move the city’s data center out of its current floodplain location and into the city’s 911 center. The adjustments require tapping into departmental savings and one-time revenues from the previous year.

But greater fiscal uncertainties remain. The tightest financial yolks remain unfunded health-care and pension costs of $985 million and counting. Employee health-care costs are growing at a rate of more than $79,000 a day, Shirey said.

Meanwhile, the CalPERS board recently voted to phase in pension-rate increases for local governments to address the increased life expectancies of retirees.

Finance director Leyne Milstein said the hikes could tax Sacramento an additional $2 million to $3 million in the first year of the rate increases and around $12 million the fifth and final year. “That would hurt,” she said.