Marshall County officials, along with municipal leaders, township trustees and EMS directors met Thursday night to start the discussion on possible ways to better serve Marshall County residents with EMS service.
The biggest issues are staffing and funding which were previously identified with the Town of Argos.. The Argos Town Council, Green Township and Walnut Township recently approved a move to a Fire Protection Territory that imposes a property tax to come up with funding the EMS Department.
Each municipal and township representative explained individual operations Thursday night. Some are funded by town-operated systems and others contract services to available ambulance companies. The common problems seem to be funding services and finding Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics to staff those services.
One solution could be a county-based EMS system. Starke County EMS Director Travis Clary gave attendees a snapshot of how his county EMS service operates. Tony Doyle from Multi Township EMS explained how county-based operations are handled in Fulton County and how contracted services are handled in Kosciusko County. They gave information to all involved to get a feel for what might best serve the residents of Marshall County.
A couple of township trustees were concerned about how moving to a county-based EMS service would affect overall funding for their budgets if the county pays for the operation. There were questions on if the emergency services funds would be taken out of the equation or if it could be absorbed into other areas of the budget to help residents.
Another discussion involved the implementation of a LOIT tax which would assist each township and entity with extra funding. The LOIT tax is designed to assist with emergency services but would be split between law enforcement, fire departments and EMS services. The option would allow each EMS service to stay as it is but work with a small boost in funding to assist with operations.
In the end, everyone was willing to do more research into how to better streamline services and continue to assist residents in their time of need. Marshall County Commission President Kevin Overmyer said he would reach out to Baker Tilly officials to see if a study of the EMS services in the county could be conducted as a starting point. From there, more meetings will be held to talk about the matter in more detail.
