Vote leaves Iola’s EMS fate unclear

“Boy, you miss one meeting…” Jon Wells said without finishing his thought.
Wells was stranded at an airport in Chicago Monday evening, instead of joining the rest of fellow Iola City Council members in one of their most important votes in recent history.
He wasn’t the only one missing.
Fellow council members Nancy Ford and Bob Shaughnessy, both of whom were out of town for family matters, left five council members to decide on the city’s ambulance contract with Allen County.
The Council ultimately voted, 3-2, to send a notice to the county that Iola was pulling out of its contract.
In response, county commissioners Tuesday increased the county’s 2015 property taxes as the first step in taking full control of the service.
“I hoped we could have avoided this, that we could have given it some more time and not get too excited,” Iola City Administrator Carl Slaugh said. “It’s disappointing because a lot of people worked very hard to get this operation going, only to see it fade away.”
Allen County taxpayers — including Iolans — were getting quite a bang for their bucks through the merged service, Slaugh said.
Overall county taxpayers are saving $500,000 from having Iola manage the service.
The countywide Type I ambulance service also mandated all EMS employees be cross-trained as firefighters.

MONDAY’S 3-2 vote featured Councilmen Steve French, Beverly Franklin and Donald Becker in favor of giving notice to terminate the contract. Council members Gene Myrick and Sandy Zornes were opposed, mainly because the vote included a $5 surcharge on electric customers to help allay a $377,000 shortfall on the city’s part to manage the service.
Slaugh said the trio’s absence was unfortunate in that there were three fewer voices to be heard in what totaled more than an hour’s worth of debate prior to the vote.
“But you can’t pick and choose which council members are present,” Slaugh said.
Might their absences have changed the final vote?
That’s hard to say.
Both Shaughnessy and Ford agreed the existing contract was unfair to the city, but both also expressed reservations about instituting the $5 surcharge. Wells, meanwhile, was a proponent of the $5 surcharge as a means to lessen the blow on the city’s utility reserves. The reserves will be used to make up much of the projected shortfall at year’s end.
Still, Wells said he supported the council’s decision.
“Ultimately, the service has to be provided,” Wells said. “If the county thinks they can do it for $750,000, they’re gonna see the same problems we had.”
“The ambulance issue has been a headache for us since I’ve got here,” Shaughnessy said. “I just hate to see all that work people have put into this go for nothing.”
Ford agreed the contract “was something the city couldn’t afford,” adding she remained opposed to the surcharge.
Wells understood the urgency of Monday’s meeting. A decision on the ambulance contract was necessary for the city to set its 2015 budget this week and meet state-mandated reporting guidelines.

EVEN IF Iola loses its ambulance service, the city will continue to provide a full-time, paid fire department.
The department’s composition, obviously, would change markedly, Slaugh told the Register Tuesday.
Among the issues now facing the city — if both sides continue on their current path and the county takes control — is losing city personnel before the end of the year, Slaugh said. That’s what happened to the county at the end of 2013 shortly before the two services merged in January under the city’s umbrella.
“A lot of employees started leaving for other places,” Slaugh said. “I could see that situation happening again on our side.”
Running a full-time fire department without ambulance services would require a crew of 16, compared to the fire/EMS staff of 29 on the city rolls today, Slaugh said. The fire department would require an operating budget of about $1 million, funded through the city’s general fund.
And while the city would no longer recoup run revenues from its ambulance operations, shifting the service over to the county would probably be a net gain for the city budget-wise, Slaugh said.