Jamestown’s second ambulance is in service – and with it Jamestown’s latest financial bet has really gone live.

Putting a second city-based ambulance into service, manned with city firefighters, has long been billed as a way for the city to help recoup some of the costs of its fire department. The ambulance will in theory allow the city to double the number of ambulance calls it can respond to each year when ALSTAR Ambulance is out of service, decreasing the times neighboring volunteer firefighters have to respond to EMS calls inside the city limits while at the same time increasing Medicaid dollars coming into the city to help pay the salaries of the firefighters responding to those calls.

Again, it all sounds good in theory.

But theory and reality aren’t always the same. In theory, Fredonia and Chautauqua County though they had the EMS business figured out. The reality is Fredonia’s ambulance revenue is continuously short of budgeted amounts – including $275,000 earlier this year. County Executive PJ Wendel bit the bullet this year and increased spending in the county budget in an attempt to end yearly deficits in the county’s fly car system – a system that was originally billed as a break-even proposition and has yet to come close.

It’s one thing for the county to miss the mark financially on the fly car system, a system staffed by EMTs at a much lower cost than city firefighters, by the way. The county has had a sizeable surplus to use to balance the fly car system’s budget the past few years. Jamestown won’t have that luxury for long if current financial trends hold true. Next year’s city budget starts in the hole given the one-shot revenues used to bring next year’s tax increase down to 3.61%. If ambulance revenue doesn’t hit projected levels the ambulance could be a drain on the city’s finances instead of an additional revenue generator. The hope is that ambulance revenue can help the city retain firefighters hired through a federal SAFER grant once the grant expires.

Adding a second ambulance to the Jamestown Fire Department makes a lot of sense in a city whose population is aging. There is plenty of call volume to keep the ambulance busy. Boosting city-based emergency response can only help city residents when minutes and seconds count. But history shows ambulance revenue projections often fall short. At a time when Jamestown needs to be plugging holes in its budget, we hope it hasn’t created a new budget hole.