WREX.com – Rockford’s News LeaderCity of Rockford looks at privatizing emergency services

City of Rockford looks at privatizing emergency services

By Katie Nilsson

ROCKFORD (WREX) - In an effort to save money, Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey wants to look at having a private company run the city's ambulance services.

The fire department has five ambulances at different stations all over the city.  Chief Derek Bergsten says they're looking at privatizing, but it may not be the best way to save money and at least one alderman agrees.  Two of the fire department's five ambulances run about 4,500 calls a year.  Private companies already help with some of those calls.

Administrators are analyzing the numbers to see if having companies run all of them would really save any money.  "We're exploring every option that we can at this time and working on getting all the information regarding what it would take and how it would be implemented as far as that goes," says Chief Bergsten.

While the fire department spends more than $6 million of its budget on ambulance service, Bergsten says it doesn't really cost that much because they also charge for it.  Mayor Morrissey first brought up the idea of privatizing in 2006.  14th Ward Aldermen Bill Robertson was against it then, when he was fire chief.  While he's willing to look at it now, he thinks the city should decide what its core services are first, then start privatizing ones that aren't. "I think there's some other things that very honestly might be easier to outsource that probably aren't those critical services that people think the city has to supply.

Robertson thinks services like payroll, data services and processing or bill collecting would be a better option for outsourcing. "I believe everyone in this community would say my taxes pay for police and fire and they would certainly list those as core services. I think certain portions of public works would be listed as core services."

Robertson says the city could end up having to subsidize private companies too, because a number of patients picked up don't pay their bill.