RUMFORD — Anybody know the current population of Rumford?
Town officials don’t.
That’s why they want Dean Milligan of Mexico-based Med-Care Ambulance Service to attend the Board of Selectmen meeting on Feb. 3. They want him to explain why the 2011 annual subsidy payment increased to $105,264. The amount is based on population.
Med-Care is owned by the towns of Andover, Byron, Canton, Carthage, Dixfield, Hanover, Mexico, Newry, Peru, Roxbury and Rumford.
At Thursday night’s meeting, some selectmen said there are 3,000 or fewer residents; one said 4,000.
But all — including Town Manager Carlo Puiia — agreed it must be less than the 6,192 on which Med-Care based its $2 per-capita increase.
If so, that means the latest annual assessment increase — from $16 per capita to $18 per capita — will jump even higher, Milligan, Med-Care’s director of operations and chief of service, said Tuesday.
“Everybody wants to think (the population’s) less than that, and that’s fine,” he said. “But if the numbers are less, then the subsidy’s going to go up more to make up the difference.”
Milligan said that aside from using new U.S. Census figures for the first and 10th year of each decade, Med-Care uses population numbers determined by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.
“That’s been the standard report that’s been used by the company since the inception,” he said.
Rumford’s 6,192 population figure came from the November 2010 report prepared by DHHS’s Public Health Office of Data, Research and Vital Statistics, he said.
Med-Care uses those figures to ensure that the subsidy assessments are fair, consistent and equitable across the board.
Explaining the subsidy assessment process, Milligan said directors do the entire budget and then separate expenses and revenue streams, medical billing revenues, and other revenues.
“For example, let’s say we have a million dollars worth of expenses and we feel we’re going to generate $925,000 worth of revenue,” Milligan said. “That $75,000 difference would be the subsidy divided by the population of the 11 towns to get the per-capita rate.”
“So, for example, if they want to drop their 4,000 (population) down to 3,000 and so on, we still have to get $75,000, and to get $75,000 with a lesser population means the per capita would have to be higher,” he said. “This has been the consistent means for 21 years of where this operation has gotten its population figures.”
He said a combination of about 600 more calls for service than last year and the resulting increase in operating costs are driving the subsidy hikes.
“On the business side, it’s good that calls have increased, because that affords us revenue that doesn’t have to come through subsidy,” Milligan said.
Overall, 83 percent of the 2011 budget is funded through Med-Care’s own operation; the remaining 17 percent, through town subsidies.
To help the 11 towns better budget for a subsidy increase, Med-Care’s board decided the increase wouldn’t take effect until July 1 of this year.
This, Milligan said, gives the towns “ample time” to conduct town meetings and to allocate the necessary funding.
The subsidy to the towns remains at $16 per capita for the first six months of 2011, and will increase to $18 per capita for the second half of 2011, he said.
For Rumford, it means payments of $8,256 from January through June, and then $9,288 from July through December.
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