It appears that after many years of faithful and professional service the Vauxhall Emergency Services volunteer ambulance service is about to be abandoned by the Town of Vauxhall administration, mayor and council, aided and abetted by the bureaucrats at Alberta Health Services. The same bureaucracy that has gutted our local rural full service hospitals and turned them into band-aid stops so that we can all wait in line at the regional hospitals a few hundred kilometers further away.

RE: Alberta Health Services is a very powerful wheel, Oct. 4.
On behalf of Alberta Health Services (AHS) we would like to provide some additional information to reassure the citizens of Taber, Vauxhall and area that when they need assistance in an emergency, they will continue to receive high quality care.
AHS became responsible for governance and funding ambulance service in Alberta on April 1, 2009. Since that date, EMS was provided to Vauxhall and District residents through the Vauxhall & District Volunteer Emergency Services under contract to AHS. The Town was awarded a two-year contract, which was subsequently extended by two years and is set to expire March 31, 2013.

All in all it doesn’t really matter, sign the contract or don’t sign the contract, either way all control is in the hands of AHS. In your personal life would you sign a contract to provide a service that is so one-sided that whoever you are providing the service for tells you when and how you will do it, with no input from you as to what might make it better, or improve that service? But if you don’t sign the contract you have no control over it either. The difference is you sign it and if it costs more than anticipated you are on the hook for the difference.

Editor:
We had a good turn out for the final bench show on Sept. 18. We had canning — pickles, salsa, relish and many varieties of fruits and jams.