(Radio Iowa) – Residents in a southeast Iowa county will soon vote on a plan to use property taxes to cover emergency medical services. The Lee County Board of Supervisors has set March 7th as the date for a referendum on a new property tax levy. Lee County Auditor Denise Fraise says this would help the county pay the nine E-M-S employees hired last fall after Blessing Health closed its hospital in Keokuk.”This is a way to get a steady funding stream into a fund that’s separate from our general basic fund that we can only use on this ambulance service,” Fraise says.

Like bond election, 60 percent of voters must approve the new levy before it would take effect in September’s property tax bills. A new law that took effect last year lets county boards of supervisors propose property tax levies to support local ambulance services. In November, voters in five Iowa counties approved E-M-S referendums. Voters in Jones, Kossuth, Pocahontas, Osceola and Winnebago Counties approved EMS referendums that were on the 2022 General Election ballot. Voters in Calhoun, Floyd and Worth Counties defeated referendums to raise local taxes for ambulance services.

According to the Iowa EMS Association, about two-thirds of ambulance services in the state are either fully or partially staffed by volunteers and many conduct fund drives to cover expenses.