Andy Close
WARREN, Pa. – On Monday, Warren City Council approved a motion to enter into an agreement with five municipalities in the county for EMS services.
Earlier this year, Cherry Grove, Mead, Pleasant, and Sheffield Townships, as well as Clarendon Borough agreed to a Multi-Municipal EMS Commission officially entered into that agreement unanimously during Monday’s special meeting.
“I think there is a lot of great work that has gone into this,” said Mayor David Wortman. “There have been a number of conversations and Warren residents’ concerns were taken into consideration. I think this is a huge first step in trying to solve the EMS problem across the county.”
The agreement still needs to be approved by each municipality and would require the municipality, the entity legally required to pay for a response, to pay $300 for a response or $150 for a dispatch.
“The ultimate goal is to obtain agreements in municipalities that choose us as a primary or secondary EMS unit,” said Fire Cheif Dave Krogler.
The agreement was met with overwhelming optimism by the council.
“This is the strongest EMS agreement that has come forth during my tenure on council,” said Council Vice President John Wortman. “This ensures those municipalities will have access to EMS services while also maintaining personnel jurisdiction within the city that pays for its services.”
Krogler reinforced that city staff is at full strength personnel-wise.
“We’re at full staff,” Krogler said. “It solves for them not having their volunteers answering the calls. We were answering calls before but weren’t getting anything. It helps offset the cost. We’re still charging the patients for the ambulance services on top of this fee municipalities are paying for our response to the call.”
Currently, the city operates two ambulances. If one leaves the city, the other will stay within the city limits.
“Congratulations to all that worked on this,” said Councilman Maurice Cashman.
