April 2007 Meeting Summary

King County Elections & Fire District # 43 EMS System

      By Peter Rimbos, Corresponding Secretary

The Greater Maple Valley Area Council, at its Regular monthly meeting on Monday, April 2, addressed the following items: (1) King County Elections Plan and (2) New Emergency Medical Services (EMS) System. The Area Council serves as an all-volunteer, locally elected advisory body to the King County Council and represents all unincorporated area residents living in the Tahoma School District.

King County Elections Plan

Ms. Sherril Huff Menees, King County Assistant Director of Records, Elections and Licensing Services Division, discussed the County plans for conduct of future elections. Ms. Menees elections office: (1) provides voter registration services; (2) administers all public elections; and (3) maintains and provides information about election results, historical election data, and voter lists.

According to Washington state law, jurisdictions can hold up to 6 elections per year. Ms. Menees emphasized that this leaves very little time between elections to prepare and execute the next election. Nevertheless, King County has instituted many changes in processes and standards to address problems that were reported following the November 2004 election. Ms. Menees indicated that none of the elections since then have had a recurrence of the reported problems.

King County is planning to join the vast majority of Washington counties in running an all-mail election sometime in early 2009. Already a large majority of King County voters choose to vote by mail-in absentee ballot. Over 80% chose this option in the November 2006 general election. In August of last year the National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials, and Clerks honored the King County Elections office with their Best Practice Award for mail ballot processing.

An all-mail countywide election will be a large undertaking with over 900,000 ballots to be mailed, processed, and verified. Ms. Menees indicated there are several major steps, which the Elections office is going through before transitioning to an all-mail election. The first step was successfully completed this past month with King County Elections helping to run the city of Seattle’s all-mail Viaduct vote. The Elections office established and staffed one regional facility and four drop-off locations to facilitate the election. This included contacting in writing all previous poll voters to ensure their signatures were up to date. Ms. Menees mentioned that no problems were encountered. The next step will be the approval later this year of an automated signature-verification system. Finally, the Elections office will run an all-mail election early in 2009 during one of the several interim elections that are held, prior to full implementation for the November 2009 general election.

The Area Council asked if the County would be able to accommodate our bi-annual election of members ballot and accompanying citizen advisory survey when the switch to an all-mail election is made. Ms. Menees stated that they would most likely insert our ballot/survey in the envelopes mailed to all greater Maple Valley rural unincorporated registered voters. Since our next Area Council bi-annual election will be this November, which will not be an all-mail election, we will not have to finalize the logistics until 2009. At present citizens who vote via absentee ballot (including this author) can still request an Area Council ballot/survey this November by contacting Dick Bonewits, Area Council Chair.

Citizens can find information on King County elections at: http://www.metrokc.gov/elections/. For general information questions, please call 206-296-VOTE (8683) or visit or write to King County Elections at the King County Administration Building, Room 553, 500 4th Ave, Seattle, WA  98104.

New EMS System

Mr. Fred Maxwell, Fire District # 43 Board of Commissioner, and Fire Chief Tim Lemon discussed the new Emergency Medical Services system the District has instituted in the past year. Under this new system the District directly provides aid car services rather than contracting our to various service providers in south King County.

The District responds to over 3000 calls each year. Mr. Maxwell stated that ~70% of those were aid calls. Of those all “critical” cases go through standard ambulance services routed to area hospitals. However, for those cases deemed “non-critical,” but still requiring some aid, service is now directly provided by the District. This system, which is meant to be transparent to those citizens who use the service, was instituted after the District determined existing service providers were not responding in a timely manner or providing top quality care.

Fees for the District’s aid car service are ~$740 per call. Mr. Maxwell pointed out that this is quite a bit less than the ~$1100 per call fee charged by private providers. Although the District is a public agency, Mr. Maxwell emphasized their aid car services are accepted as a justifiable expense by health care insurance providers.

The District uses a third party, Design Systems Northwest, to handle all billing. Two Area Council members related problems that were incurred when “collection agencies” tried to push citizens for payment. Mr. Maxwell indicated that this should not have happened. He emphasized that citizens should bring these types of problems and any other problems they may encounter with aid car services to the attention of Fire Chief Lemon at (425) 432-0200. There is also a “hardship” form citizens can complete should they have any problems paying for the service.

Next Meeting

The Area Council meets on the first Monday of each month (except on legal holidays) in the conference room of Sheriff’s Precinct # 3 Headquarters (at 231^st St & SR-169 across from Fire Station). The public is invited to attend. Each meeting begins with an Open Comment period to allow the public to voice issues of concern.

Our next regular monthly meeting to be held on Monday, May 7, at 7:00 PM will feature Ms. Julia Larson of King County’s Office of Business Relations & Economic Development. She will discuss Rural Economic Strategies. Comments on Area Council business may be submitted to GMVAC, P.O. Box 101, Maple Valley, WA  98038, or to Dick Bonewits, Chair, at gmvac_chair@hotmail.com.