For the second time in five months, the Slidell City Council approved a contract with Acadian Ambulance to provide emergency medical services within the city.

The city has been using Acadian Ambulance for the past year without a contract. Last December, the council approved a contract, but Mayor Ben Morris vetoed the contract 15 days later. The council failed to override the veto in January, and the contract was sent back to the city attorney for fine-tuning.

Morris’ displeasure with the first contract was over the presence of the ambulance service during emergencies such as floods and hurricanes. The first version of the contract did not specify that Acadian Ambulance has to provide personnel and an ambulance to stay within city limits during a disaster. “I want it iron-clad saying they will stay in an emergency or I will not sign it,” Morris said in December.

The new version presented to the Council Tuesday night has a clause that makes Acadian Ambulance provide two staffed ambulances during an emergency that will stay at the Emergency Operations Center during the duration of the emergency.

Wednesday, Morris did not indicate whether or not he was happy with the new contract.

“I will go over it again and see what it says,” Morris said. He has 15 days to either sign or veto the contract.

The vote to approve the contract was not unanimous. The only nay vote was from newly installed Councilwoman at large Kim Harbison. When she was still the District F Councilwoman, she voted against the first version because she felt there was no way to force Acadian to stay in the city during an emergency. Tuesday night she voted against the new contract because she didn’t think it was right to accept Acadian with out looking at other ambulance services.

“If we were looking for a provider, it should have gone out for bids,” Harbison said. “The process should have been opened up.”

The city was served by both Acadian and Lifeguard ambulance services, but a year ago, Acadian bought out Lifeguard.

The one-year contract does set up a quality assurance panel made up of three council members, a representative of the Slidell Police Department and a member from Fire District 1, and a citizen appointed by the mayor. The panel will evaluate Acadian’s performance for the year and recommend to the city if the contract should be renewed. The city does have the right to fine Acadian if they fail to meet response time standards set up by the contract. The fines range from $1,000 to $5,000 depending on the number of calls that fail to meet response time standards.

Even though Harbison had misgivings about the process of selecting Acadian Ambulance, she is willing to give the company a chance.

“We shall see what happens in the next year, I just want the best for the people of Slidell,” Harbison said.