The City’s response to my recent FOIA request was simple, and stunning:
“The City does not have data regarding dispatch time, en route time, arrival time, unit type, or disposition.”
Let that sink in.
Because the very report the City provided, the January 2026 EMS Monthly Report, includes contract language that says the opposite.
On page 6 of that report, under Section 2.4 – Reporting, it states:
“Provider shall submit monthly electronic reports to the City. These reports shall include response times, dispatch processing times, interagency referrals, call downgrades, and any other compliance data requested by the City or MCA. Non-compliance with this reporting requirement may be subject to contract termination based on the 90-day notice provision.”
So let’s walk through this carefully. The contract requires monthly electronic reports. Those reports must include:
- Response times
- Dispatch processing times
- Compliance data
And yet the City says it does not possess:
- Dispatch time
- En route time
- Arrival time
- Unit type
- Disposition
That isn’t a small clerical issue. That is the core dataset required to evaluate whether the EMS contractor is meeting performance standards.
You Cannot Calculate Compliance Without the Data
The same report shows:
- 279 emergency responses under 6 minutes
- 116 emergency responses over 6 minutes
- 5:28 average emergency response time
You cannot calculate:
- An average response time
- A 90% compliance threshold
- A percentage under 6 minutes
without individual incident timestamps.
Mathematically, those numbers require:
- Call received time
- Dispatch time
- En route time
- Arrival time
That dataset exists somewhere. You don’t generate an average from a narrative summary.
So either:
- The contractor has the data but the City does not.
- The City has the data but is claiming it does not.
- The City is accepting summary reports without underlying verification.
- The City is not retaining required compliance data.
None of those scenarios are good.
The Oversight Question
The agreement requires a 6-minute arrival for 90% of emergency calls. That is a performance-based contract. Performance-based contracts require measurable verification.
If the City does not have:
- Dispatch timestamps
- Arrival timestamps
- Unit-level data
Then how exactly is compliance being verified? Is the City independently auditing data? Or is it simply accepting summary percentages from the contractor? If the City cannot produce incident-level data under FOIA, it raises a straightforward governance question:
How is performance oversight being conducted?
Contractor Records and Public Records
Under Michigan law, records related to the performance of a governmental function are generally considered public records. Emergency medical response in a city is unquestionably a governmental function. If the data exists but is held by the contractor, then one of two things must be true:
- The City has contractual access to it.
- The City does not.
If the City has contractual access, then it is subject to FOIA. If the City does not have contractual access, then the City negotiated a contract where it cannot access the very data required to evaluate compliance. That would be an extraordinary oversight gap.
The Reporting Requirement Is Not Optional
The contract language is clear:
“Provider shall submit monthly electronic reports… These reports shall include response times, dispatch processing times…”
“Shall” is mandatory. And non-compliance may result in termination. So which is it? Is the provider not submitting required electronic data? Or is the City not maintaining or retrieving it? Because both cannot be true at the same time:
- The contract cannot require electronic response-time reporting,
- and the City simultaneously not possess dispatch and arrival data.
Why This Matters
This is not about attacking EMS personnel.
This is not about criticizing medics in the field.
This is not about being “anti-ambulance.”
This is about transparency and contract compliance. When the City moves from a municipal EMS model to a private contractor model, oversight becomes more important, not less.
Response times are not anecdotal. They are measured in minutes. And in cardiac arrest, stroke, respiratory failure, and trauma, minutes matter.
If 30% of emergency calls exceed 6 minutes, as shown in the report, the public deserves access to the data behind that number. And if the City cannot produce that data, the public deserves to know why.
The Core Question
Here is the simple, non-political question: How can the City certify that 90% of emergency calls meet the 6-minute standard if it does not possess the underlying dispatch and arrival timestamps?
That is not rhetoric. That is governance.
What Should Happen Next
The City should clarify:
- Does the City receive incident-level electronic data each month?
- If so, where is it maintained?
- If not, why is the reporting requirement in Section 2.4 not being enforced?
- Does the City have contractual authority to access raw CAD exports?
- Has any independent audit of response-time compliance been performed?
These are reasonable questions for any performance-based public safety contract. Transparency builds trust. Ambiguity erodes it.
This is not about scoring political points. This is about whether the City is monitoring compliance with its own contract. Because when a contract says “shall submit electronic reports including dispatch processing times,” and the City says it does not have dispatch time data, that contradiction demands clarification.
Not defensiveness. Not spin. Clarification.
And the public deserves it.