An emergency ambulance contract with the city would require the fire department to buy new ambulance vehicles — probably six, two of which would be fire engine-ambulance hybrids, Pyle said. It would also require hiring new staff. Still, the fire department estimates that, in the 2004-05 fiscal year, it could have generated a profit for the city of about $450,000.

In addition to claiming that the city failed to choose the lowest bidder as required by state law, the Gold Cross lawsuit also questions the city's procedure in putting out its bid request and the criteria it used to select a bidder.

That has other Utah cities watching the case closely. One of those cities is Salt Lake City.

West Valley is the first Utah city to put out a bid request under the new state law that allows it to do so. Salt Lake City was the second. In January, it put out a request under a new version of the law, which was slightly rewritten and went into effect at the start of this year. Now, it wants to learn from West Valley's court battle.

"The city's interested in the process and the issues that are being raised by both sides" in the West Valley lawsuit, Salt Lake City Fire Department public information officer Scott Freitag said. "The reason we are interested in this particular case is because it is the first RFP (request for proposals) that was ever issued by a municipality and the first contract that was issued under that same law."

Gold Cross provides emergency and hospital-to-hospital ambulance service for Salt Lake. Freitag said the city is not dissatisfied with Gold Cross' service, but now that it is allowed to shop around, it wants to take advantage of that option.

"It was good business sense for Salt Lake City to issue an RFP because the contract with Gold Cross had expired and, rather than being held to the previous model established in law, the city decided to go with the new model," Freitag said. "The decision did not have to do with the practice of Gold Cross currently. It had to do with the city's ability to go out and look at its options."

Salt Lake plans to keep Gold Cross as its interfacility ambulance service, just as West Valley does. Freitag said the fire department did not submit a bid to provide ambulance service to Salt Lake. The bid process closed May 17, but the proposals have not been turned over to a review committee yet, and it is unknown how many bids the city received.

Freitag said he believes that the issues facing West Valley will not be a problem for Salt Lake, partly because Salt Lake put out its request under the newer version of the law.

"It really will not have an impact on Salt Lake City's RFP because our RFP was approved by the state and the process has closed," Freitag said. "I think what we're finding by listening to this case is that the issues why Gold Cross and West Valley are here today are not issues we will face in Salt Lake City."

The trial, which started May 17, resumed June 16-17 after a nearly monthlong recess because of conflicts in the judge's schedule. It is now in recess again and is scheduled to resume Aug. 24. The trial is a bench trial, meaning it will be decided by a judge and not a jury.

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E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com