{"id":20373,"date":"2025-10-25T05:09:32","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T05:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/20373\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T05:09:32","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T05:09:32","slug":"nueces-county-voters-could-expand-rural-ems-coverage-with-proposition-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/20373\/","title":{"rendered":"Nueces County voters could expand rural EMS coverage with Proposition A"},"content":{"rendered":"

Voters in Nueces County will decide whether to expand emergency service districts to bring fire and EMS coverage to rural areas long without protection<\/p>\n

NUECES COUNTY, Texas \u2014 Since the state created Emergency Service Districts, or ESDs, in 1987, Nueces County has established five of them. But ESD #3 President Gary Eulenfeld said some unincorporated parts of the county were never included, leaving pockets of residents without dedicated coverage.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo most ESDs were formed by consolidating existing fire municipalities \u2014 volunteer fire departments, rural fire districts, those sort of grouped and lumped together into what are now known as ESDs,\u201d Eulenfeld said. \u201cWell, invariably, there were some areas that have never had any protection. So they weren\u2019t folded into the new formation of ESDs, and they\u2019ve been sitting there basically unprotected all this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

RELATED: \u2018We could lose our wells overnight\u2019: Sinton farmers, officials, warn Corpus Christi water plan could drain Evangeline aquifer<\/a><\/p>\n

Officials often refer to those unprotected zones as \u201cno man\u2019s land.\u201d Proposition A on the November ballot would address those gaps by expanding district boundaries to include rural communities currently outside any ESD.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest changes would involve ESD 1, which plans to annex the London area. Captain Kevin Ramon with the Annaville Fire Department, which is part of ESD 1, said the expansion would ensure those residents have reliable access to fire and EMS services.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking to take care of the people out towards the London area that did not have designated fire and EMS protection,\u201d Ramon said. \u201cThat is the entire purpose of this election \u2014 making sure that people have help, and they have it coming fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ramon added that quicker response times can make the difference between life and death.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone\u2019s 20 miles away, and they have a relative that\u2019s in cardiac arrest, the science shows that if someone\u2019s not there within a few minutes, there\u2019s a very low certainty of survivability,\u201d he said. \u201cWhether it\u2019s a medical emergency or a fire response, annexation means having help in their backyard so that it\u2019s there quick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Proposition A would not raise property taxes for residents already living within an existing ESD. Those newly added to a district would see an increase of no more than 10 cents per $100 of property value.<\/p>\n

Early voting started Oct. 21 and Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Voters in Nueces County will decide whether to expand emergency service districts to bring fire and EMS coverage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-20373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}