Firefighters seek $8,000 in funding

After a trial year of not budgeting a specific amount of money for the emergency service side of the eight Henry County fire departments, the Henry County Supervisors have been asked to go back to a budget.

Jerry Johnston, director of the EMS (Emergency Medical Services) for the Henry County Health Center, and Ed Farley, Henry County emergency management director, met with the supervisors Tuesday to discuss how the previous year went and where to go from there.

"It was set up so that the fire departments could request funds for different departments," said supervisor Marc Lindeen of the previous year's system. "It was thought that that way the fire department could levy costs to different departments. That didn't turn out to be the case."

The request made by the departments for the coming year is for the county to budget $8,000 directly to the EMS department and to have the department at the health center distribute from the budget to the different fire departments.

Johnston and Farley said the reason for this request was because the sophisticated records system at the health center will be able to keep track of the funds and make them easy to distribute. The supervisors would also be able to easily check the expenditures made from the fund by going online to review the records.

"We're looking to pool it through Jerry because he already has a good working relationship with the different fire departments," Farley said. "I am confident that Jerry and the hospital will oversee the funds in a manner that is good for the fire departments and for the taxpayers of Henry County."

The supervisors commented that they thought the idea was a good one, but could not give a definite answer until they go through their own budget and find where the $8,000 would come from.

In the past, before the trial year, the county would budget $1,000 to each fire department separately. Supervisor Gary See said that he agreed that there was a lot of wisdom to pooling the money and distributing funds from one account.

The county began to distribute money to the fire departments for emergency medical services in 1997, after the old source of the income (an ambulance service and funeral home in Winfield) closed.

Farley said that the money is extremely necessary now that all fire fighters are generally taught how to be first responders at a scene where a medic is needed.

Farley said that currently the fire departments in the county respond to far more medical emergencies than fire calls. Therefore they need the additional money from the county for training and equipment purposes.

      "We [EMS] have a really good relationship with the fire departments," Johnston said. "In a lot of counties this wouldn't work. We are very fortunate to have that relationship."

The Henry County Supervisors will continue to examine the issue in upcoming meetings.