The Spokane Valley City Council held its regular meeting on Tuesday, July 7, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall. The meeting included presentations on ambulance transport costs and a major federal transportation grant, a proclamation for Parks & Recreation Month, public comments on several sensitive topics, a unanimous vote to apply for an RCO grant, and reports on the regional economy and the 2027 state legislative agenda.
So the Spokane Valley City Council regular meeting, formal B format of Tuesday, July seventh, twenty twenty six is now called to order. We will start with an invitation uh from Mike Drew from Valley Assembly Church. If you please standards, Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have given us unalienable rights that don't come from men and they don't come from government, but they come from you. And Lord, you also give us responsibilities. And Lord, as those that lead our city today, we pray that you would give them wisdom that you would give them insight, Lord, as they deal with difficult challenges and interesting problems that you'd give them the very mind that they need and the insight, Lord, to see beyond their natural wisdom. So today we unite together in this chamber. Amen. Thank you, and please join in the Pledge of Allegiance. Aye. Opposed. The agenda is approved. Uh we have a number of special guests and presentations here today. About the cost. So first, uh a little bit of background. Um as you know, the last two years we've seen the cost of an ambo ride here in Spokane County go up by uh just over 400% uh and another, I believe, uh 100% uh uh-ish on the on the rides. Um but again uh what I really want to explain is currently right now, most people that we transport are not paying $5,400. So here's here's the whole um the whole misinformation. I know that people are running around going, we're paying $5,400, we're paying $5,400, but we're not. Um in fact, in the last two years since we've had our own contract with AMR, we've received zero, zero complaints about the cost of an ambulance ride. Now, why is this? That's a great question. Back in 2020, the state of Washington introduced the the original balance billing act, and that came into effect as the same time as the No Surprises Act for the federal government, also in 2020. The problem with both of these acts is neither one of them covered out-of-network ambulance transports, ground ambulance transports. And that's what we're talking about. So in 2024, at the legislative session, it was introduced out of network ground ambulances were brought into uh as an addendum to the uh original RCW, and it passed in 2024 during the legislative session, went into effect January 1st, 2025. And the the reason that this is hugely important is because what that does is it takes away the $5,400, if you will, to a point. So anybody who is self not self-insured, but has full are fully insured. If you are fully insured, you have Medicaid, you have Medicare, you are only paying your portion, your co-pay, your uh deductible, your coinsurance, you're only paying that amount. The rest of that bill, the ambulance service has to eat. We're not we're not paying that. That's what the balance billing act is for, and that's why it's covering uh the ambulance trip. Now, there is a small percentage. So to give you a specific number, over the last two years, the Spokane Valley Fire Department has transported just over 27,000 patients. Of the 27,000 patients, 9%, only 9% would fall into the category of potentially paying the $5,400. So that's roughly $2,400 customers that went to the hospital and may receive the whole bill. And why? Because most of those people, uh, 1,800 of them have no insurance. They're just not insured. So they could potentially reach get received the whole bill. The other remaining number are non-contracted uh uh insurance. So meaning their company may have an insurance uh let's use an example, a large company like your Amazon uh that that would be paying $80 to $100 million a year for insurance decides to be a uh self-funded um insurance. In that case, they have to they have to um sign on with the state or sign a contract in order to reduce that amount that you may or may not pay if you're if you are contracted with them. That number though of our transports is 2.7%. So we're talking about a very, very small number. Most of our um transports are are covered under the balance billing act. So I just want to assure you that that even if they continue to go up, they're not gonna get any more out of the insurance companies, Medicaid, Medicare. Those numbers are set, and that's it, period. They pay what they pay, and you are not gonna get a surprise bill with what's left. Um questions. Well, you know, actually, let me before I go into that, as an example, that's why I I put this here so you can kind of see what I'm talking about.