Vada Aikins is frustrated.
Join the crowd, said Commissioner Gary McIntosh at Tuesday morning’s Allen County commission meeting.
Frustrations of many are what to do to merge county and Iola ambulances, an outcome that would seem to save tax money.
The county has $1.3 million budgeted for its service in 2013.
The city figured its emergency medical services budget for next year at $362,000, and $810,000 for the fire department. In that comes a bit of a rub; firefighters man ambulances, and just how the mix of budget numbers break out between the two sometimes is questioned.
Also, Aikins thinks — she isn’t alone — that the two are so interchangeable that the city is determined to keep both to ensure it maintains a full-time fire department.
That, Aikins postulated, is the consensus of the ambulance review committee appointed by county and Iola governing bodies to make a recommendation. She is a committee member, as well as a Humboldt council member.
Options available are to merge the two services, give all service to one or leave things the way they are.
Immediate resolution of what has become known as the “ambulance problem” doesn’t seem imminent.
To wit: At the last ambulance committee meeting, at behest of Sheriff Tom Williams — as the only nominee he will become a commissioner in January — Jason Nelson, county ambulance director, and Ron Conaway, his counterpart with the city, were asked to meet and make a recommendation.
Nelson said Tuesday morning that after two meetings “we got nowhere,” despite the fact that Conaway said at the last committee meeting he was near to completing a proposal for a merger.
“I hoped the concept (of the two meeting) would be helpful,” said Williams. “I guess now the course is (for the committee) to make a specific recommendation.”
As it is now, Allen County operates two ambulances from a station in the 400 block of North State Street, and one each in Moran and Humboldt. Four blocks from the Iola station, two city ambulances are dispatched from the Iola fire station.
AIKINS complimented Iola’s firefighters, noting they were important to public safety in Iola and oft times elsewhere in the county.
But, she continued, an extensive report prepared by the Kansas Board of Emergency Medical Services, asked by the committee, listed more weaknesses in Iola’s service than in the county’s. Also, Aikins said the fire department loomed ominously over committee talks and negotiations.
What can be done that’s best for all in the county in regard to emergency medical services, should be the overriding concern, she stressed.
During the last committee meeting, Aikins moved that the group recommend the county run all ambulance service, with its type I service providing better care. The motion died for lack of a second.
