LISBON — After an initial treatment at a previous one meetingcity ​​councilors will consider the second reading of an ordinance to create a department of emergency medical care in the city — stemming from an interest in taking over Lisbon Emergency, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

The benefit of having a city-run service is being able to maintain good patient care and ensure residents have access to emergency services, said City Manager Glenn Michalowski.

Having a city-run EMS department would give the city better control over operations and spending, he said. It also gives the department the ability to seek grants and other types of revenue not available to private nonprofits.

There would also be opportunities to train in cooperation with the police and fire departments in scenarios such as a mass casualty, Michalowski said.

Lisbon Emergency’s board must vote to dissolve the nonprofit and allow the city to take it over, which has yet to happen. Because of this, the city has not invested much time in what that transition would look like, instead staff has focused on crafting the EMS ordinance.

“It’s early in the process,” he said. “We’re still developing the framework, so to speak, and once that’s done, we’ll go into what (a city/ward merger) looks like and how that happens, if it happens.”

If emergency Lisbon board members decide not to disband the nonprofit and keep the ambulance service private, the ordinance would apply but the city would not allocate funding for it. Instead, it would continue to contract that works, Michalowski said.

In the proposed ordinance, the department would operate as its own department and not under fire or police, he said. There would be a manager who would be appointed by the city manager and a deputy manager.

If Lisbon Emergency were taken over by the city, the city would maintain the status quo, Michalowski said, which would include keeping current staff and management. However, state mandates may require the manager position to be advertised to allow for a competitive hiring process — though he needs to research those requirements more.

Contracts with Bowdoin and Bowdoinham would be honored, with the idea that service contracts with those cities would be maintained, Michalowski said.

It cost the city $532,974 to renew its contract with Lisbon Emergency for fiscal year 2025, he said. That estimate stands at $626,221 for fiscal year 2026, according to next week’s meeting documents posted on the city’s website.

He doesn’t expect Lisbon’s emergency budget to change much over the next year if the city takes over the department, but he’s still waiting on information from the city’s workers’ compensation agency to get a more accurate cost estimate.

“A rough estimate gives us a range between a small savings to a small increase in operating costs pending negotiations and Lisbon Emergency’s board approval,” according to meeting documents.

Last year during workshop discussionsLisbon Emergency staff presented the idea of ​​making the nonprofit a city-run department, but at the time, the city council chose to extend the city’s contract with the service instead. Council members urged Michalowski to reactivate the Public Safety Committee to look at the service.

The Lisbon residents formed the service after a teenager died in a car accident in the 1970s while waiting for an ambulance to arrive from Lewiston, according to the department’s website. It serves approximately 12,000 residents of Lisbon and Bowdoin.

Revenue has become more of an issue for private EMS departments. Often, departments struggle to make enough money by billing customers to cover what it costs to run the service — requiring departments to seek more funding from cities they cover.

As insurance reimbursement to EMS departments declines and staffing shortages persist, EMS departments have become increasingly strained and struggle to provide meaningful services to the areas they cover. Some services in Maine have been closed entirely.

Emergency officials in Lisbon were not available for comment prior to publication.

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