No one disputes that the county faces challenges in providing emergency medical services.

Municipalities are required to provide the service. Except for the City of Warren, volunteer organizations are the boots on the grounds.

What level of service do elected officials expect?

What level of service can the departments provide?

Hammering down answers to those questions has become an early central part of a tri-county EMS study that includes Erie, Crawford and Warren Counties.

The first step in that process is a level of service matrix where each municipality will be asked to offer a grade – A-F on the fire side and A-D for EMS – on the level of service it expects. The county’s chiefs will also be asked to grade what they can provide.

“(I’m) hoping it generates dialogue between the municipal officials and the chief officers of the fire services,” COG Fire Services Chair Paul Pascuzzi said. “That’s what needs to happen.”

He added that the municipalities won’t be able to make that call without help from their departments.

Steve Hoffman, operations and training officer with the city fire department, emphasized the importance of a “true honest grade” from the chiefs.

A letter from Pascuzzi to each municipality details the parameters of the study — that peer experts will be brought in by the state to help and that those experts will be looking “for some basic fundamental data and information to get an idea of how we currently operate.”

“We need everyone at the table, working together to solve the EMS and volunteer fire capacity issues,” he wrote. “We know that closing fire departments and mergers in rural PA don’t work, as such, we need to get everyone together to solve these issues. We have pride in our great departments across all of Warren County and our rich history of helping those in need in our community. Our first responders are the core of the community fabric and sometimes pride blinds us to the current reality of our situation. It is up to us to acknowledge our current dilemma, it’s up to us to educate our community, it’s up to us to work closely with the firefighters and it’s up to us to assure our residents receive the highest level of service delivery that our first responders can deliver together. It’s time to get to work.”