ESD 11 Commissioners Approve 2021 Cypress Creek EMS Budget
Stable Funding Best Guarantee for Safe and Orderly Transition to ESD Self-Operated Service
Houston, TX April 6, 2021
Emergency Service District 11 (ESD 11) Commissioners voted to approve the Cypress Creek EMS (CCEMS) budget for 2021 during a special meeting last week.
“We are happy the budget negotiations are behind us so we can focus on continuing to deliver the highest level of emergency services to the community through the end of our contract with ESD 11,” says Wren Nealy Jr., chief executive officer for CCEMS. “We also want to let the citizens who attended the meeting last week and publicly voiced their concerns about the ongoing CCEMS/ESD 11 litigation know that we hear them. We wish the litigation could take a backseat to the logistics of the transition to the new ESD 11 self-operated 911 service. Lawsuits should always be a last-resort option. We attempted to resolve our disputes with ESD 11 Commissioners when they first began their defunding campaign against CCEMS, including requesting mediation, but our efforts failed. In order to keep ambulances on the road and our Red Shirts employed, we were forced to file a lawsuit against ESD 11 to get paid for the services we never stopped delivering for the community.”
On March 24, ESD 11 amended their counterclaims against CCEMS to sue the current CCEMS CEO, along with all current directors and several former directors. Those directors are community members who have served the residents of ESD 11 through uncompensated work on the board of a nonprofit. The District has also sued CCEMS’s billing company, Koronis.
About Cypress Creek EMS
Cypress Creek EMS is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with 46 years of excellence in emergency services formerly provided within 177 square miles of northern Harris County and to approximately 560,000 residents. CCEMS now operates in eight counties across Texas with Creek GroundCare services and around the world with Creek AirCare. CCEMS is known nationally as an innovator in prehospital medicine. For example, CCEMS was the first civilian EMS in the country to transfuse whole blood into a trauma patient in the field. CCEMS is also part of a Military EMS Fellowship that is bringing battlefield medicine to civilian EMS to reduce deaths due to trauma.
###
Contact: Miranda Sevcik 713-515-9729
