The Warren County Council of Governments sees itself as potentially part of the solution to the emergency medical services crisis in the county.

And discussions toward what that looks like continue.

Paul Pascuzzi told the COG last week that the COG Fire Services Committee spent the September meeting “focused on some of what we had listened to or heard at the Sept. 2 meeting.”

At that meeting, Commissioner Ben Kafferlin laid out the recommendations from the county’s EMS Task Force Report.

That included incentivizing recruitment.

Pascuzzi said the committee has kicked off a recruitment program funded by the county’s allocation of CARES Act funding.

To that end, he said three videos promoting the need for volunteers are in the works “to have a marketing push for recruitment.”

Part of the county’s EMS Task Force report also recommends the hiring of a county-wide EMS coordinator and Pascuzzi said that job description is being developed and funding options are being explored.

He said the committee also discussed the joint effort of the Clarendon, Cherry Grove and Sheffield VFDs to be jointly dispatched for EMS calls during the day and said the entities plan to “continue that co-op well into 2021,” supplemented by a plan by Sheffield Township to have their road crew to be able to function as first responders in 2021.

County Planner Dan Glotz said that more elected officials need to get involved in the EMS situation as it is ultimately their responsibility to provide the service to their constituents.

“We encourage you to attend these meetings,” he told the elected officials at Wednesday’s meeting.

“In this process, we want transparency,” Clarendon Borough Councilman Paul Pascuzzi said. “(We) want to let people know what we’re talking about.”

He said there are a “lot of misconception” and a “lot of unfortunate misunderstanding of what EMS looks like in Warren County.”