The county’s ambulance contract discussion continues.
Carl Slaugh, speaking as a resident rather than in his capacity as city council member, shared information with the commission relevant to the ambulance agreement between the City of Iola and Allen County.
Slaugh shared a bit of history regarding the agreement, as well as some statistics on the number of emergency workers employed by the city and how many calls they responded to over the past couple years.
“Because we run both fire and EMS,” he said, “there are times when a decision has to be made of which one has priority. That becomes an issue infrequently, but with limited resources, somebody makes the decision. That’s why we exercise mutual aid, mostly with Chanute.”
“We feel like it’s a savings overall for the county,” said Slaugh of the current arrangement. “I think there’s some who feel like somehow the county is subsidizing the Iola fire operation, … but I don’t think financial figures bear that out in terms of total cost.”
A decision on the ambulance contract should be on the horizon in the coming months.
LORI Stone, treasurer of the Hospital Auxiliary Board, spoke with the commission about helping to purchase software for the hospital gift shop’s cash registers.
According to Stone, St. Luke’s said they could not cover the costs associated with the upgrade, because the gift shop is technically a separate legal entity from the hospital.
The estimated costs for the software run approximately $10,500, and although commissioners seemed receptive, they did not allocate any money to the Auxiliary at this time.
“We were just wondering about your coffers, and whether there was an opportunity to be self-sufficient,” said commissioner Bruce Symes.
“In our current financial situation, we’re looking for opportunities to save every penny ourselves,” he added.
CHELSIE Angleton, 911 director, spoke with commissioners about mutual aid agreements between counties, where one county can take emergency calls for another in the event that a dispatch system goes down, etc.
Angleton said that, for example, Allen County had recently fielded calls for Anderson County.
BECKY Voorhies, health programs director for Thrive Allen County, spoke with commissioners about the effort to install storm shelters across the county, especially with an eye to unincorporated communities.
Voorhies mentioned that, during the process of applying for federal grant dollars, it might be necessary for the communities in question to have resident income data collected, to ensure that a certain percentage were considered low-to-moderate income.
