The JEMS district provides EMS and paramedic services for about 30,000 residents of Franklin Twp., Carlisle and the city of Franklin.
JEMS Board Chairman Jason Faulkner, who is a Franklin City Council member and represents the city on the board, said the service reduction was one of six options the board considered at Tuesday’s special meeting.
Joe Rosell, a Lynn Drive resident who is also a firefighter/paramedic for an area agency and a former lieutenant with the Joint Emergency Medical Service for 10 years, said “browning out” the Hunter unit from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. is “unacceptable.
“It’s going to take an ambulance nine minutes to get here if it’s in Franklin and about 20 minutes if has to come from the Carlisle area,” Rosell said.
“I live two minutes away from the Hunter station,” he said. “What if my child stops breathing during that (brown-out) during the night? It could take 20 minutes for an ambulance to arrive from Carlisle and it only takes four to six minutes for brain death to occur.”
Faulkner said the reduction will save the district about $38,000 over three months in payroll costs because the number of staff will be reduced from seven to five.
The service reduction will also take out the first response vehicle from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. and that it would go to the Hunter station on Robinson-Vail Road during the hours of 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., Faulkner said.
He said the board “reluctantly voted” for the service reduction based on one of the options prepared by JEMS Chief Andy Riddiough.
“Based on the data from 2007 to 2010, this was the leanest time to make a reduction in service,” Faulkner said.
The JEMS budget is funded by two small tax levies, an 0.8-mill levy approved in 1988, and a 1-mill levy approved in 1995, that generates about $460,000 or 40 percent of its approximate $1.5 million annual budget. The remainder of the revenues are from billing receipts for services, Faulkner said.
The district’s EMS units average about 3,000 runs a year and has a full-time chief and fiscal officer and about 55 emergency medical technicians and paramedics.
Riddiough said this should be a temporary reduction in service until officials can develop its budget projection for 2011.
He also said he expects all options, which includes himself being laid off, to be revisited by the board at its monthly meetings. The next JEMS Board meeting will be at 6 p.m. Oct. 5 at the JEMS station on East Sixth Street in Franklin.
However, Rosell said he still feels like he isn’t being listened to and said there are other ways to fix this.
“We pay our taxes like everyone else does,” he said. “Franklin, Carlisle and the rest of the township is getting service 24/7. But we won’t.”
“No one is happy in the Hunter community that I’ve talked to but most of the community doesn’t know about this yet,” Rosell said. “I’m not playing with this. I’ve seen people die because we could have saved them if we’d got there sooner. Nine minutes is unacceptable.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4504 or erichter@coxohio.com.
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