Riley County commissioners heard from representatives from the City of Riley on the issue of ambulance services to the northern portion of the county Monday.
Riley City Commissioner Greg McKinley and Mayor Tim Sharp were both present at the meeting. McKinley responded to a monthly call for services report from EMS Director David Adams earlier during the meeting.
“it’s like a financial statement, he’s using dollars and cents saying it doesn’t pay to have anything in the north county because there aren’t enough people there,” said McKinley, “But the ambulance, I thought was a service not a business. You don’t evaluate the other services. I think it’s a service to serve all of the county.”
McKinley said the option to move an ambulance to the county shop to help with response times in northern county isn’t enough, because there is another 20 miles of county that needs to be serviced. The move to the county would lower the response time to Riley by eight minutes, according Adam’s report.
McKinley suggested putting a station in Riley to not only lower response times, but to get to know the area and roads in the county.
“There have been problems in the past where the drivers don’t know where all the roads are, and have quicker access,” said McKinley.
Sharp agreed with McKinley on a closer location and reminded the commissioners that they offered the Riley City Building to be used.
“I wanted to show you that we are fairly normal people, not just a cold statistic, in the hope of that in the near future there will be a plan and action to get better emergency care in the form of an ambulance to all the people of Riley County,” Sharp told the commissioners.
Sharp also suggested a station in Randolph, but added he isn’t sure where the best place would be.
Commissioner Ron Wells responded to both McKinley and Sharp, citing the calls for service report from July showed only 17 out of the 419 calls were to northern county.
“In Randolph, if we were to put a station in there 24/7 with a full crew, what are they going to do with only 17 calls in a month’s time?” responded Wells.
Sharp countered Wells’ statement saying there may be people who aren’t actually calling in due to the long response times.
No action was taken by the commission, as this was just a discussion item.
