If you’re injured in a car accident while traveling through the northern part of Seminole County, you may not receive prompt medical attention, according to Seminole City Manager Steve Saxon.

Saxon told the city council Tuesday night that since the city “lost” the recent emergency services tax election and a nearby community is now without an ambulance service, there is no ambulance coverage along the I-40/Hwy. 99 corridor in Seminole County. Saxon’s comments were made during the “reports” portion of the council meeting.

“I don’t want to end on a sour note, but this really speaks directly to leadership and what can happen when bad decisions are made,” Saxon said. “As you are probably aware, we lost the fire tax election. In that, we are going to lose about $86,000 a year. The sales tax we were getting before will be redistributed to others. We were notified officially today (Tuesday) that Prague will no longer be covered by REACT, which means if you travel to the Catfish Roundup or anywhere on I-40 in Seminole County you will not have ambulance coverage.”

A quarter-cent countywide emergency services tax has been in place for several years, and last month voters said “yes’ to extending it for another five years. Historically, the Seminole Ambulance Service has received a larger portion than the Konawa and Wewoka services, but now the ambulance portion of the revenue (40% of each quarter-cent) will be divided equally among the three cities.

The August election was called May 24 by the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC). Earlier this year, the BOCC set the election date for June 8 and according to that ballot, Seminole would have continued to receive a larger cut than Konawa or Wewoka. The BOCC canceled that election, citing a clerical error (the Seminole Fire Department had been omitted from the ballot) and the election date – as well as the ambulance tax distribution equation – was changed. Seminole’s share was essentially cut in half.

According to the official minutes of the May 24 BOCC meeting, Seminole Fire Chief Fielding Lucas asked the board why the change was made after the fire departments had already agreed to the percentages stated on the now-invalid June Ballot. Lucas was answered by District One Commissioner Russell Yott.

“With the clerical error, the commissioners felt they needed to rescind the previous resolution, election proclamation and propositions. I felt from the start that it needed to be split equally between Konawa, Seminole and Wewoka ambulance services and all the negative comments on Facebook toward the county didn’t help,” Yott replied.

Yott was seemingly referencing a Facebook post made by the Seminole County Firefighters Association in which residents were asked to contact the commissioners and share their concerns about proposed cuts to the local ambulance service.

Prior to the August election, Saxon was very vocal in his opposition to the proposed redistribution of the tax, and he didn’t mince any words about the issue at this week’s council meeting.

“It feels like we’re getting slapped in the face, punched in the mouth and yet, do we still have a moral obligation to send ambulances and take care of those people? Yeah, we probably do,” Saxon said. “Is it fair for us to put that expense on the backs of the people that are paying for it and send a 250,000-mile ambulance to Konawa? Good grief. That’s a super hard decision to make. But when you have people making decisions that don’t benefit the citizens of this county and the people they’re supposed to be representing, and they would rather sow ill will than solve problems, that’s what we get.”

The tax extension will take effect Jan. 1, 2022 and will remain so until Dec. 31, 2026.

“I can tell you that we struggle. It feels like we’re getting slapped in the face and punched in the mouth.”

Steve Saxon, Seminole City Manager