Ambulance station likely to remain at Wellsville

An ambulance likely will stay at Wellsville.

After earlier discussing the Wellsville ambulance station’s fate, county commissioners informally agreed Monday to keep funding for the Wellsville station in the budget for next year.

The deal virtually was sealed by an offer from the Wellsville Bank to provide $5,000 to allow the county to buy fuel in Wellsville for the ambulance next year.

“We feel that the facility is very important to our community and would like to see the facility remain operational in Wellsville,” Steve Layton, Wellsville Bank president, wrote in a letter to the county offering the money.

County Administrator Lisa Johnson urged commissioners not to immediately accept the offer until she finds out that the county can legally accept the donation.

However, if state law says the the county can accept the donation, which would be used for a prepaid fuel card, commissioners said they would take the deal.

“I say leave it in Wellsville,” Commissioner Ed Taylor said. “ ... They’re making a more-than-fair offer to try to help us.”

In earlier meetings, commissioners had discussed bringing the ambulance and crew back to Ottawa as a cost-cutting measure and because Ottawa is a more central location.

Earlier, the city of Wellsville, which converted the upper floor of the Wellsville Fire Department station to allow an ambulance crew to stay there 24 hours a day, offered to eat the extra cost of utilities in a bid to keep the ambulance in the city.

In an informal tally Monday, Taylor and Commissioners Don Stottlemire and Roy Dunn said they wished to keep the ambulance at Wellsville. Commissioners Sue Farrell and Don Hay sought to bring the ambulance and crew back to Ottawa.

Stottlemire said the bank’s offer will eliminate most of the county’s expenses of keeping the ambulance in Wellsville.

Keeping the ambulance in Wellsville also will serve one of the fastest-growing areas in the county and will ensure that at least two-thirds of the county’s population will be within three to eight minutes of an ambulance, Dunn said.

“I think we ought to stay in Wellsville,” he said.

Taylor said it would make sense to keep the ambulance at Wellsville, especially in light of statements by Sheriff Craig Davis and Jim Honn, one of his Republican challengers, at a recent political debate in Wellsville that they would consider stationing deputies at Wellsville because of the city’s rapid growth.

However, Farrell said she was concerned that keeping an ambulance at Wellsville might affect response times to the western side of the county, especially when Franklin County EMS is short-handed.

Hay said he was also concerned about coverage to the northwestern and southern parts of the county.

“Wellsville should have to be dismantled,” he said.

The Wellsville ambulance has been stationed at the Wellsville Fire Department since January on a trial basis.

The county has three ambulances — besides the one at Wellsville, there are two at the main station next to Ransom Memorial Hospital.

At times when the two Ottawa ambulances are on call, the ambulance at Wellsville is “moved up” to LeLoup and occasionally to Ottawa, Nick Robbins, EMS director, said.

Franklin County EMS has a fourth, and older, ambulance operated by senior and office EMS staff in those cases where the other three ambulances are on call, he said. However, those instances have been relatively rare, he said.