Ambulance district levy to rise 30%

After hearing an annual report from the district's auditors on July 17, which highlighted the issue of the district writing off over half of its ambulance fee revenue, the Cloquet Area Fire District board approved a preliminary budget for 2025 which includes a 30-percent increase in the ambulance levy.

The double-digit tax hike would be the largest since 2023, when the levy increased by 100 percent. For 2024, the ambulance levy increased by 2.83 percent. The reason for such a sharp increase in the 2025 ambulance levy is to get ahead on ambulance purchases.

"If we don't increase the levy enough to buy the next ambulance, we're going to have to bond, we're going to start having overlapping bond payments and we're just going to get behind on all of our ambulance purchases," fire chief Jesse Buhs told the board, adding that it costs more to bond.

While the vote was unanimous, and board sentiment echoed that of the auditors: This is not sustainable.

For the past several years, about 57 percent of ambulance fees had to be written off for government payers such as those using Medicaid and Medicare, representatives from Wipfli auditing service told the board. This creates a gap in revenue which, without state aid, the district can fill only through its taxing power.

CAFD board chairman Bruce Blacketter said a 30-percent levy increase to cover a 57-percent loss in ambulance fees could seem like a deal.

Gary Harms, the board member representing Perch Lake, said that arrangement doesn't seem fair. "You're asking a taxpayer to pay for somebody else's problem - that they didn't cough up the money for an ambulance."

"Every health care organization ... is faced with this same problem," Brevator representative Linda Way said. "It is the cards you're dealt. And it doesn't make [raising taxes] right."

Way said the work Buhs is doing to get aid from the state - money available to cities but for which the district is not currently eligible - is the right approach.

The fire chief said getting state aid is his top priority.

Despite the concerns voiced, board members praised the district staff's proposed budget.

Harms, who in previous meetings insisted on a 3-

percent cap on levy increases, was pleased that the combined fire levy decrease and ambulance levy increase averaged out to a 2.75-percent jump.

The ambulance levy increase would be offset by a reduction in the fire levy, made possible by the lack of planned facilities projects in 2025. A home

valued at $200,000 would see a $21 increase for ambulance-

only payers, and a $10 increase for combined fire-ambulance payers, according to district documents. Buhs said no one is a fire-only payer.