Published: July 24, 2008 11:29 pm         

Area voters will see proposals on ballot

Residents in Alfalfa County will vote Tuesday on two tax proposals officials say will determine whether ambulance service will continue

Meanwhile, in Fairview, residents will decide whether to continue a sales tax to pay for capital improvements.

In Alfalfa County, residents will vote on a three-quarter percent increase in the county sales tax and a 3-mill property tax levy to fund ambulance service in Helena and Cherokee.

Roger Unruh, director of Helena EMS, and Francis Davis, an intermediate EMT at Helena, said if both issues don’t pass ambulance service will be lost.

Unruh said he is worried people won’t know what the taxes are for.

“The fear I have is people will go to the polls being uneducated as to what the two issues are about. It is really about keeping the ambulance services,” he said.

Unruh said the property tax is small in comparison to what will be lost if it is not approved.

“On the land tax, if a person’s market value is $100,000 it is only going to cost them $37 a year. If people stop and think about how little it is going to cost to keep an ambulance service in the community,” he said, “it is a matter of life and death if you have to wait hours to get an ambulance to them.”

If the ambulance service is lost in Alfalfa County, ambulances will have to come from much farther away, Davis said.

“Helena has no doctors. We are 30 some miles from any hospital. The ambulances are the medical service until we can get the 30 some miles,” she said.

According to Unruh, the closest ambulances will be from Alva, Waynoka, Enid, Pond Creek and Fairview. He said it will put stress on the other ambulance services if they must answer calls in Alfalfa County.

“Every time you lose an ambulance service, it taxes the other ambulance services,” he said.

“Whether these ambulance services stay is totally up to the voters. It is up to them if they want an ambulance service or not. The most important thing is for people to get out to vote. It is all in their hands,” Unruh said.



Fairview sales tax



In Fairview, voters will be asked to extend a one-cent sales tax set to expire in January.

If approved the tax will continue for 15 more years. Two projects being touted by supporters are building a new city pool and renovating Blackledge Auditorium.

The auditorium was dedicated in 1939, while the current pool was opened in the early 1950s.

The one-cent tax was passed in 1994 to construct a city office building and buy a fire truck.