London city residents on Tuesday rejected a bid to cut their ties to the Madison County Emergency Medical District and create London’s first-ever city-operated EMS service. The issue was rejected by 56 percent of the vote.
Madison County officials have for years sought to balance a quality ambulance and medical service with a cost that would satisfy both rural and urban residents.
But some in the growing urban area felt that the county system was overburdened, expensive and that response times for critical-need victims were being compromised.
With approval, the city would have withdrawn from a longtime, 3-mill levy for countywide EMS services and replaced it with a permanent 2-mill version to fund its own EMS department.
London had said that speed and costs would have improved. And it said that property owners would have saved about $35 per year for each $100,000 of home value. The new tax would have raised about about $386,000 annually, almost $200,000 less than what it paid to the county.