There won’t be any grand answer to the county’s emergency medical services crisis if there isn’t discussion among everyone involved.

Those conversations have been happening.

And they’re happening more openly now.

Commissioner Ben Kafferlin held a session on Tuesday night primarily for elected officials to “clear the air on some issues.”

Top among those issues was the potential expansion of a pilot agreement between the City of Warren and Pleasant Township that would run through the end of the year.

The county, City of Warren, EmergyCare, Sheriff, Pleasant Township, Pleasant VFD, Glade VFD, Glade Township, county Planning & Zoning participated in Tuesday’s meeting.

“The county is in an EMS crisis,” Kafferlin said, explaining that a resident on the edge of the county had to wait an hour for an ambulance.

He noted that it’s a municipal — not county — problem but said the county is involved as a third-party as it operates the 911 center. “It’s fundamentally not our responsibility to fix the crisis,” he said, noting, though, that it’s not a crisis everywhere in the county.

“COVID really put a damper on response through the volunteer system,” Public Safety Director Ken McCorrison said, explaining it’s not abnormal for an ambulance crew to all be in their 60s or 70s. Doctors telling those responders not to take calls during the pandemic has “crippled” the volunteer response system further, he said.

Partnerships have evolved in recent months in response to challenges presented by dropped call rates, especially for those volunteer departments where there is a nursing home in their coverage area.

Kafferlin said that Youngsville has partnered with EmergyCare for coverage during the day, Monday through Friday.

McCorrison said Tidioute is working with surrounding municipalities to start a paid service.

The Times Observer has previously reported on a joint-dispatch arrangement for the Clarendon, Cherry Grove and Sheffield departments.

He then presented the recommendations from the EMS Task Force that suggest further partnerships — outlining a battalion system based on call volume and geography.

“And all of these municipalities and fire departments have had conversations about how to work together,” he said. The Task Force “didn’t come up with one big grand scheme to fix things.

“I want to applaud Pleasant and the city and Glade for… working together.”

The agreement in place with Pleasant and the City of Warren places two of the city’s paid responders at Pleasant’s station during the day three days a week during daytime hours. An effort to expand that to five through the end of the year was tabled by council and the city is holding a session tonight at 6 p.m. at the Struthers Library Theatre to hear feedback from the public on the arrangement.

Fire Chief Rodney Wren said the city responded to 124 calls in Pleasant last year and 110 so far this year.

He said the agreement has been in the works for over a year and estimated 35 meeting went into getting the agreement over the finish line.

“I think it’s working out real well,” Tim Johnson with the Pleasant VFD explained. “I think if anything now the number of responses we’re taking outside of the city coverage has increased quite a bit. Now I think we’ve stepped up our game.”

Johnson pointed out the additional fire protection that the city would gain from being able to tap into Pleasant VFD’s apparatus when on their station.

Wren said a recent fire call to a west end hotel and the two staff in Pleasant were on scene 64 second after city fire crews arrived.

The pilot agreement has been in place for 18 shifts and State Hoffman, operations and training manager for city fire, said seven or eight times Pleasant’s ambulance has been called into the city to cover both of the city’s ambulances being out.

“That alone (helps) tremendously,” he said.

Councilman John Wortman, who has spearheaded opposition to the expanded pilot, said he sees the value in having access to the third ambulance. “Yes, the City of Warren is gaining that revenue from Pleasant Township. The city resident who pays the same earned income tax now has less resources within their line.”

“I look at it as us having additional resources,” Wren said.

Kafferlin said if the funding isn’t enough for the city “you should negotiate it, not poopoo it.

“You have to respond anyway,” he continued. “Literally if this agreement was $1, you’d be $1 ahead…. I really want to applaud Pleasant for (stepping) up.”

Andy Brooks, Pleasant Township supervisor, noted that the $108,000 expense the township would incur for an entire year of the program at five days a week is three mills of township tax, as opposed to one mill of revenue for the city.

Kafferlin said the county is involved in this situation because Pleasant approached the county to allocate CARES Act — federal COVID-19 relief funding — to cover the cost of the two additional days of the pilot program through the end of the year.

“Unfortunately we haven’t been able to do it (because) the agreement wasn’t passed.”

Jared Villella raised concerns over Mayor Maurice Cashman raising the specter of this being a revenue stream.

“His idea is a city run county-wide EMS system,” he said. “Those things are scary as a City of Warren resident.”

“I admire these efforts that have been done,” Wortman said. “I think it’s an important issue we have to fix. My concern is I’m elected to represent the residents of the City of Warren. Our system that we’ve had for decades that works 99.7 percent of the time…. My fear (is) when we begin changing a system that works… I’m not saying the Pleasant agreement is all bad. Once this starts, where does it stop? I think that’s what the biggest issue is” for council and city residents. “Once you open this door, where does it stop?”

Kafferlin acknowledged that the city’s model works but responded directly to Wortman’s concern.

“You’re increasingly getting calls outside of the city,” he said. “It may work now but it’s about to break.”

“The city system is not what’s breaking,” Wortman responded.

“It doesn’t matter if you shoot yourself in the leg or if I shoot you, it doesn’t matter why you have the problem,” Kafferlin said. “You have a system that works that is about to break. If (you) don’t fix it fast, you’re going to have a deep problem.”

He said, instead, that the proposed Pleasant agreement is building on the system in place.

“Why wouldn’t you in order to help yourself help the other departments around you and become the employee entity?” Kafferlin asked.

City Manager Nancy Freenock said that Cashman indicated the townships would cover the costs for any such expansion.

“If we’re going to look to make it a little bit bigger, we would need more employees,” she said, noting the city has the infrastructure to potentially do that.

“Also, I want to make sure everyone understands, we value the volunteers,” she said. “If we have a fire in the city, they are there. You can’t put a value on that…. There is no way to thank them enough or put a dollar value on that.”

“Nobody in this room is condemning any volunteers,” Hoffman said. “The problem is the volunteer system is on life-support at best. If we don’t do something, it will ultimately collapse” which would turn the situation into “something we can no longer control.”

Kathy Johnson with the Pleasant VFD emphasized that this is just a pilot program through the end of the year and said it was her understanding that if the pilot was successful that two contract employees would be stationed in Pleasant in addition to a full complement of six at the Warren station, which is how that station is typically staffed.

Kafferlin said he’s been called a socialist in this process which he said “hurts me deeply because that’s the exact opposite of what we’re trying to do. If there is anything that is socialist, it’s the current state law.”

He said it’s his goal to find a “cooperative agreement” to avoid regionalization of service. “It’s such a win-win for the city and Pleasant” and potential Glade if they were to join.

“This is about not letting them fail,” Hoffman said, “to help us in our time of need.”

Kathy Johnson said the relationship between departments has been an “us vs. them thing.

“Within the last two years, especially since Chief Wren has been here, (there is) more of a cooperative agreement. Morale is so much higher than it’s ever been. I (would) hate to go down the road again and have this us vs. them mentality.”

Wortman suggested that using CARES Act funds to subsidize this agreement would potentially tax city residents on another level — the “federal income tax used to pay for these resources.”

“That argument is faly on its face wrong,” Kafferlin said, citing that the city is the entity being subsidized by CARES Act funds as they have had CARES Act eligible expenses.

“We are staffed to run those emergencies that Mr. Wortman is concerned with,” Hoffman said. “The revenue that is generated by the ambulance help offset” the cost of fire and EMS service in the city. “We need to find a way to augment” funding so as to not be required to increase taxes.