Ohio FD asks residents for their opinion on emergency services

By Brian Haytcher
Star Beacon

NORTH KINGSVILLE, Ohio — The North Kingsville Fire Department has asked village residents to come to a meeting on July 17 to voice their opinions after the village ended part-time staffing in emergency services, effective July 5.

According to a statement from the fire department posted on social media, the decision was made without any communication or involvement from fire department members.

The statement said there were no paramedics on duty in the village between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. and eight people had lost their jobs.

In November 2023, the village’s voters approved a two-per-mille ambulance tax by a vote of 639 to 540, according to the Ashtabula County Board of Elections.

The fire department’s statement says that the collection of taxes will not begin until 2025.

Mayor Terrance McConnell said when the original decision was made to hire part-time emergency medical services staff in 2022, it was only intended to be temporary.

“It was done on a trial basis,” he said. “Until 2022, the rescue squad and fire department were volunteers from the beginning and did a great job as volunteers.”

“Well, they used this paid rescue crew to keep people there, and that cost us money. The expense of having someone there was not feasible compared to the revenue.”

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Before the county established the paid department, there was about $100,000 in the rescue squad’s fund, McConnell said.

“In September 2022, they were turned over to a paid rescue crew, and we went down to $84,000 in 2022,” he said. “In 2023, our funds were down to $17,000. So it wasn’t feasible to do that because we didn’t have enough revenue to cover the expenses.”

There should have been quarterly evaluations of the project’s feasibility, McConnell said.

“For some reason, the quarterly evaluations were stopped and therefore no one knew what the financial situation was because the previous government had not checked it,” he said.

If these evaluations had continued, he believes the village would have realized by 2023 that the operation was not viable.

McConnell said sometimes there was only one person on staff, meaning they couldn’t respond to calls.

He said things could change when tax funds start flowing.

“If we start looking into what caused this breakdown and what we can do to improve it or how we can make it work, I’m willing to do that with the chief,” he said. “I can probably get the chief of the fire and police departments, we could put a committee together and we could re-evaluate the thing and see if it’s doable.”

“But these comments make me angry because we have been a volunteer fire and rescue team that has worked successfully for at least 70 years, and suddenly we get money for it and it doesn’t work anymore.”

McConnell said he would not take office until 2024, so he was not here at the beginning of the current situation.

“So I had to do what I had to do: I had to tell them there was no money for salaries,” he said.

The department is paid for the transports, he said.

“Hopefully we can bring it back, there are no guarantees,” McConnell said.

The local council is facing a difficult decision, he said.

“It’s unfortunate that it hasn’t worked so far,” McConnell said. “It was a trial project, and we’ve re-evaluated it, and it’s not self-sustaining. I was told between the last administration and the Fire and EMS, it was just a trial project, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and it has to be self-sustaining, and it’s not.”

The fire department’s statement urged villagers to attend the meeting on July 17 and advocate for the return of part-time emergency medical personnel.

The meeting will be at 7 p.m. in the North Kingsville Community Center.

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