A couple of weeks ago in a meeting of the Town of Jonesville, Police Chief Richard Madison raised the issue of ambulance service. He struck a note that should set off sympathetic vibrations resonating throughout every community in the parish. At the end of this year, we, and by “we” I mean not just the elected representatives in the parish from Larto to Enterprise, but the people themselves, will need to be prepared to have an answer to the question of “What do we do about whether we will have ambulances in Catahoula Parish?” It will be a voter’s decision to make because this is going to cost us one way or another.
Without even a locally stationed professional ambulance service that is on call 24/7, it will be surpassingly unlikely that any major employer will ever locate here. It is also highly likely that people will die as a result of our not having speedy assistance from ambulance crews.
Volunteers like those at the Sandy Lake Volunteer Fire Department will try their best and may even save lives, but they should not be expected to do what full time personnel who are sitting ready day and night with superior equipment might do.
Recently at the Columns Community Care Center, an ambulance from Natchez took 45 minutes just to arrive at the facility. If a patient requires complex medical care that only a qualified hospital can provide, that rather obviously could be a life-threatening delay. Why the temporarily local ambulance was not summoned I do not know. Probably it was already on a call. We have only one. But it is clearly an illustration of the sort of potentially fatal delays one might expect with no professional local response at all.
With our already lacking a full-service hospital in the parish, being without a professional ambulance service pretty much closes the door on prospects for creating local jobs. Less local economic activity means lower tax revenues which means worse roads, more flooding, poorer schools, more crime and wasted lives, and even more people leaving who will take with them our prospects for breaking the cycle and reversing the downward spiral that the parish faces.
If we cannot make some decisions for ourselves, circumstances will soon make the choices for us.
High taxes have a negative impact on growth. However, when fewer people have to pay for the same services, their tax burden increases. It’s a vicious cycle that somehow must be broken. Cutting government is only a first step. We will all have to be creative thinkers, and deciding what to do about our emergency services is a g ood place to start.
Grants will help, but they are not the ultimate answer. We must find ways to make ourselves grow.
In that respect, tiny Harrisonburg has been an example to follow. But they are small and results will take time to show.
Despite others’ whining about the new sheriff’s offices, the sheriff has still been the most aggressively creative thinker in the public sector. And this is a public sector problem just like fire protection. It requires a public sector solution because at least 25% of our population can’t even hope to afford a private solution. But just because the sheriff has stepped up doesn’t mean everyone else in local government is off the hook. It is not the sheriff’s problem alone. It’s a Catahoula Parish problem, ultimately a taxpayer problem.
