LOCK HAVEN — Lock Haven City Council tabled an ordinance which would allow both Eastside and Citizens Hose fire companies to seek reimbursements for response to motor vehicle accidents.

City Manager Gregory Wilson offered a summary for the proposed ordinance, which was brought to council through the fire advisory board.

“They want city council to consider an amendment… enabling each of the companies, independently, to bill for the cost of response to motor vehicle accidents in the city when the person involved is not a city resident,” Wilson said.

Wilson said each fire company would be responsible to contact and administer any claim to insurers for their cost. He noted each intends to use a third party administrator for this.

“The city would not be part of the administration or collection of any claim. That would all go through the independent local company,” he said. “On top of that, all proceeds would go into the coffers of the local company.”

Wilson said he would suggest council request any revenue collected through this method be reported to the city within the year beginning Oct. 1 to the following Sept. 30.

He explained the city allocates up to $3,500 to each fire company in its annual budget for the replacement or repair of equipment like hoses. Any money the companies might collect through reimbursement would be subtracted from that allocation.

“I think (this) would be a relatively fair way for the city to see a benefit from the income that the individual company would make,” he said.

Following Wilson’s explanation, Council Member Barbara Masorti asked if the ordinance was reviewed and OKed by each fire company.

“Both district chiefs — the chief for Citizens and the chief for Eastside — are in favor of it. Neither is here this evening,” Wilson said. “The city’s chief doesn’t have an opinion because the city doesn’t have skin in the game so to speak.”

Council Member Steve Stevenson, who ultimately motioned to table the ordinance to allow more time to review the proposal, expressed uncertainty about passing it even on first reading.

“There’s a lot of questions. When we have something like this, we need to get it a little ahead of time so we can start doing our own work,” Stevenson said, noting the information wasn’t sent to council until later Friday night. “I did spend a couple of hours today (Monday) finding documents from my emails and tacking on statistics and doing things.”

Stevenson said he wasn’t opposed to the idea of reimbursement, however he felt the fee schedule proposed should be reviewed again.

“The fee schedule means that if somebody has a wreck in the city and they’re not from the city, they’re looking at a couple thousand dollars” in fees,” Stevenson said. “This is a high fee schedule. The engine response is $300, the rescue response $400, the chief response is $200, you already have $900 in there and then $250 per firefighter. So you might have 8 to 10 firefighters on scene and that’s $2,500.”

Stevenson emphasized he wasn’t undermining the work already done, but noted the amount of money the city puts into each fire department through payment of utilities, insurances and other avenues. He wondered if it would be possible to share a fee and split it.

Wilson noted the city is legally unable to collect a few such as the one suggested in the amendment.

Stevenson also said the amendment doesn’t make it clear how the fire companies would split the reimbursement if both companies were to respond to the same accident.

“There’s nothing in writing on the SOP on how to define how things are going to be done,” he said.

He suggested, instead of an amendment to seek reimbursement for responses within the city, the fire companies could consider instead seeking it for response calls to other municipalities.

“We can’t continue to carry the load without some sort of reimbursement to our expenses. If they have to make the money and supplement it out of our budget, I’m okay with that,” he continued. “But there should be a formula somehow so we offset more of our costs — our insurance, our fuel.”

Stevenson’s motion to table the ordinance until any questions or clarifications could be answered was passed unanimously by all members of council.