MEXICO – Med-Care Ambulance has announced it hopes to design and build a new ambulance facility with the support of the 11 towns for which it provides coverage, the organization’s president, Steve Brown, said in a prepared statement.

The cost of the facility is estimated at $2 million, according to a release issued by Med-Care on Wednesday. The project would be funded with a long-term financing package in an effort to minimize the burden to towns and their taxpayers, Brown said.

The ambulance service has already contacted the 11 towns it serves outlining its proposal for a new facility that would house its six ambulances, two emergency response vehicles and Oxford County’s mass casualty incident trailer.

Operations Director Dean Milligan said while the collective population of the towns Med-Care serves has remained flat at about 17,000 people, calls for ambulance service have increased by 35 percent in the past 12 years. In 1994, the service responded to 2,083 calls, while in 2006 it responded to 3,124 calls. The service expects to respond to at least 3,600 calls in 2007, Milligan said.

“The location of our facility is extremely critical in our ability to provide service for our 11 communities as it is imperative that we remain centrally located in order to best respond within our coverage area that spans over 500 square miles,” Milligan said, also in a prepared statement.

Brown said Med-Care has been in its current facility since the 1990s, and that facility, when renovated, was meant to be a short-term fix.

“We have come to a point where we can no longer properly house our equipment and staff to provide the level of service that is expected,” Brown said.

Milligan said there were three primary reasons the ambulance service needs a new space, including:

• A bigger space for housing equipment

• More space for housing 24-hour staff

• Larger office space

In 2006, Med-Care’s board created a building committee that has been researching all the options available, Milligan said. The most cost-effective option appeared to be purchasing land and building a new facility, he said.

Brown agreed. “During our entire process the goal was to determine the most financially feasible avenue to take that would allow us to properly operate our company for a minimum of 25 years,” he said.

The new facility would also be designed so it could be easily expanded as needed in the future, Milligan stated.

Selectmen in each of the 11 towns Med-Care serves have been informed of the decision and will decide if they can support the expansion. A proposed location for the new facility has not been identified, but Med-Care officials said they hope to build in Mexico to retain the central location to the towns they serve.

“Although the expenses associated with this project appear to be high,” Brown said, “this is a long-term investment in the future of this region, and … this facility appears that it will serve these communities for the next 40 years.”