The Greenwood City Council on first reading approved Ordinance 25-18, which would establish fees for nonemergency responses and lift assistance at residential care facilities and require notice to those facilities. Fire department leaders told the council that calls to a small number of residential care facilities account for a disproportionate share of total call volume.

Fire Chief Jamie said the department had recorded 5,719 calls for service through July and 887 calls from seven residential care facilities, which he characterized as roughly 15% of the department’s total calls. “This would be serving as a deterrent,” Jamie said, adding that fire apparatus hourly operating costs are significant: “A fire engine for us to operate is approximately $1,500 an hour … our ladder’s about $2,000 an hour.”

Jamie described the ordinance as targeted at nonemergent calls to facilities (for example, repeated lift assists) rather than calls from single-family residences. He told the council that his proposal includes a tiered fee structure and that, based on discussion, the chief believes the proposal would set the first nonemergency call at about $500 and subsequent calls at about $1,000. “If we’re called there for … a sick person or cardiac event and we arrive and find out that it is a nonmergent call, we would document that, and then that would be noted, and that would be when we would send out those,” Jamie said.

Councilmembers asked how facilities would be notified and how billing would be handled. Jamie said the city would follow the same notification and billing process used previously for fire-alarm fees: the city would send notices to the facilities and recover fees through the same billing mechanism used for alarm responses; revenue would be used for emergency medical operations and equipment. During discussion some councilmembers asked whether the fee could be used on a case-by-case basis or to monetize pickup services, and Jamie said the department’s reporting would document the circumstances of each call.

Councilmembers moved to suspend the rules to allow first reading at this meeting; the suspension and the first-reading vote both passed unanimously. Ordinance 25-18 passed its first reading on a 6-0 vote. The ordinance remains at first-reading stage; a final adoption vote was not recorded at this meeting.

If adopted in later readings, the ordinance would require formal adoption (second reading and any necessary publication) before fees could be charged. The council also directed staff to send notices to affected facilities if the ordinance proceeds to final adoption.