Iola council members Monday night tabled until the new year efforts to resolve whether to pay rent to have access to Allen County’s ambulance station in the 400 block of North State Street.
Council members, and city staff, think an agreement to merge Allen County and Iola ambulance services should make the building rent-free. County commissioners think otherwise, and requested rent of $250 a month.
Corey Schinstock, assistant city administrator, pointed to a paragraph in the merger agreement in a discussion with the Register Thursday.
To wit: “. . . County shall transfer possession but not title to all county EMS service vehicles, equipment and buildings listed in Exhibit ‘A’ to City.”
“That seems pretty clear,” Schinstock said, although, he added, no exhibit A has been added to the agreement, but that “the county ambulance station is the only county building involved.”
County commissioners have maintained that because the building wasn’t specifically included in the agreement, as part of the so-called exhibit A, the city has no right to use it without the commissioners’ blessings, and, as it unfolded at their behest, rent of $250 a month.
“The way it stands right now, we’re going to wait until after the first of the year and have Bob (Johnson, city attorney) and Ryan (Sell, EMS director) work it out with the county,” Schinstock said.
In any case, he said how use of the building shakes out won’t have an effect on the agreement that merged the two ambulance services.
The city wants to incorporate the building as a place for storage, some office activities and as a training facility. It became a need when Iola’s fire station was reconfigured to make room for female ambulance personnel.
“We don’t want males and females sleeping in the same room,” City Administrator Carl Slaugh told county commissioners earlier this month.
Schinstock said contracts for free use of buildings in Humboldt and Moran were close to being completed. That has been the case for years with countywide ambulance service, first when it was a cooperative effort of Iola and Allen County, and more recently with the county operating ambulances outside Iola.
Personnel of the two former services have been working together since early December, and from all appearances there will be a seamless transition when Iola takes full control of all county EMS on Jan. 1, Schinstock said.
COUNCIL MEMBERS were told that county commissioners were expected to decide whether to sign off on the city’s proposal to put all of Iola into the Neighborhood Revitalization Plan, except public property. To date the zone has included mainly older sections of town.
The NRP provides for tax abatements of 100 percent, save 5 percent remained by the county for administration, for six years, with taxes returning by 20 percent a year after that. New construction and improvements of $5,000 or more are affected.
