01-08-2025 Workshop Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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GG-22 COPPER AND OTHER METAL THEFT GG-23 EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES Metro Cities recognizes the need for adequate resources for social service and mental health services and programs to help reduce the need for public safety responders to perform these services. Metro Cities supports allocated ongoing state funding to local governments for public safety purposes such as imbedded social workers, mental health response, training, innovation, and more. Metro Cities supports tools and incentives such as scholarships and/or reimbursements for local law enforcement agencies to use and help with recruitment and retention barriers. Metro Cities supports resources for the MN Department of Public Safety to acquire and store with a third-party vendor anti-scale fencing, pedestrian doors, and vehicle gates for local government facilities to improve equitable access to these de-escalation and safety tools. Wire theft from streetlights, other public infrastructure, and private property negatively impacts communities, by reducing public safety for all transportation modes. These thefts also cost cities hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to replace and repair damaged streetlights. Metro Cities supports efforts to curtail the theft of copper wires from public infrastructure and private property. Metro Cities supports statutory changes that would require appropriate controls on the purchase and sale of scrap copper and other metals. Metro Cities also supports increasing penalties for copper wire and other metal theft. The Emergency Medical Services Regulatory Board (EMSRB) is the state regulatory entity that oversees and issues ambulance licenses and also has authority to designate exclusive emergency medical services (EMS) operating areas, or primary service areas (PSAs), for ambulance providers. Once a provider has been approved to operate in a PSA, the provider is authorized to serve the area for an indefinite period of time. Currently, no other state health licensing board grants providers an exclusive operating area. Health licensing boards play a critical role in setting professional standards and credentialing processes. However, the EMSRB has not imposed operational standards to ensure an area has adequate coverage and service levels such as response time requirements. Nor is there state oversight of ambulance billing rates. The current system does not require ambulance services to disclose the number of ambulances staffed, where an ambulance is responding from or any other important data points that would ensure a community is receiving quality ambulance services. The lack of transparency within Minnesota’s ambulance industry compromises accountability by EMS providers. 24