Hermosa forum focuses on ambulance district

The possibility of forming an ambulance district to serve eastern Custer County was discussed at a heavily-attended community forum Oct. 28, at the American Legion in Hermosa. The forum brought together Hermosa and Custer County residents, area ranchers, members of the Hermosa Board of Trustees, Custer County Commissioners and representatives from various sectors of public service in and around Pennington and Custer counties, including Battle Creek and Fairburn fire districts, emergency management and the Rapid City Fire Department. 
Leo Van Sambeek, a long-time Hermosa resident and a part of Hermosa Connects, Inc. (HCI), and Hermosa Area Growth and Development (HAGD), says that ambulance service to the Hermosa area is about to change, and will no longer be paid for by Rapid City tax dollars. 
HAGD, as the economic development side of Hermosa Connects, took interest in the formation of an ambulance district because of the economic impact the presence of ambulance service (or lack thereof) would have on Hermosa and the surrounding area. 
“There are certain businesses that require that an ambulance service be available,” Van Sambeek said. “An example is Black Hills Electric Cooperative. When they build their complex west of town, they need to have an assurance that there is going to be an ambulance available as far as their safety.” 
Van Sambeek also mentioned the possibility of building an adult care facility in Hermosa, which would also require availability of ambulance service. 
“When we look at economic development, those were two areas where we had questions as far as the ambulance,” Van Sambeek said. 
Rapid City Fire Department (RCFD), since a 2007 agreement, has provided ambulance service to Hermosa and eastern Custer County for $2,000 per year, and at the time of the agreement it was a sustainable situation due to the low call volume and the benefit to Rapid City from Hermosa’s sales tax dollars. However, the call volume has increased over the years, both in Custer County and in Rapid City, RCFD’s costs went up, and $2,000 per year ceased to be sustainable. Earlier this year, the fee was increased to $60,000 per year for 2025 and 2026, and a long-term solution EMS availability was sought. 
RCFD runs roughly 23,000 calls per year, 80 percent of which are medical in nature. Out of  RCFD’s 12 ambulances, four are considered primary ambulances, together running 4,000 calls each year. A single call into Custer County generally takes one hour minimum, and usually falls to Medic 4, one of the four primary ambulances, and is dispatched out of Station 4 on Fairmont Blvd. This effectively removes a key ambulance from service to Rapid City residents and can easily cause a cascade of shifting response areas and lagging response times, as the remaining ambulances have to cover for the absent ambulance, a situation that can run RCFD EMS providers into the ground.
Last year, RCFD ambulances responded to 140 calls in eastern Custer County, at an estimated cost of $1,000 per incident. Van Sambeek was adamant that RCFD should not be viewed as the bad guy in this situation, and said that the years they provided eastern Custer County with such inexpensive service were a gift, and even at $60,000 it is still a gift. But Rapid City taxpayers will no longer be paying for service to eastern Custer County, and the question going forward is how to keep EMS coverage available.  
Unlike fire protection and law enforcement, EMS is not considered by the state to be a necessary service, which gives Custer County residents a choice, Van Sambeek said. Either they can choose to do nothing, and RCFD’s essentially free ambulance service coverage will cease, leaving citizens responsible for either their own transportation to the hospital in an emergency or personally footing the costs of an ambulance transport; or citizens can choose to form a tax-supported ambulance district, which would require a commissioners’ resolution and the election of a board of directors.
Van Sambeek said that the formation of a district would be necessary to have an entity able to collect and operate off tax money, but the way EMS services would be provided would be determined by the board of directors. If the decision is made to form a district, then the question is whether to contract for service with an existing ambulance service or multiple services, or to start a new ambulance service and build it from the ground up. Either option presents challenges. 
Van Sambeek laid out some different scenarios and cost estimates, estimating that the annual price tag for operating or contracting for an ambulance service would be roughly $400,000. With a maximum statutorily-allowed mil levy of 0.6 mils, the maximum tax revenue that could be raised to fund the ambulance district ranges from $317,800 to $405,000, depending on how the district boundaries were defined. 
“Even being fairly generous with the definition of this ambulance district, we’re possibly getting just down to the bare bones,” Van Sambeek said. 
Taxes for residents of the ambulance district would increase by an estimated 3.2 percent for owner-occupied and nearly 9 percent for ag land, a disparity and source of conflict and resistance that could potentially be remediated with a special assessment. 
“That’s a healthy increase,” Van Sambeek said. “We could split the way this revenue is collected using property tax and special assessment. Special assessments could be applied only to certain classes, like owner occupied, but there is a provision that if you take the sum of the property tax and the special assessment, the sum cannot exceed the equivalent of a 0.6 mil levy. So there is some opportunity there for the directors to figure out how they’d like this to work. If we want ambulance service to continue in this area, we need to pay for it, and we need an ambulance district in order to collect money to pay for it,” Van Sambeek said. 
Over the next weeks and months, discussions will continue and boundaries will be discussed and defined, but the intent is that action would be taken in time for the formation of an ambulance district to be on the ballot for the June 2026 primary election. 
Citizens are encouraged to respond to a questionnaire posted on the Hermosa Connects, Inc., website  at hermosacon
nects.com and engage in discussions on this topic.