The Culver Town Council is continuing work to reshape its EMS Department.
The volunteer focused department is having difficulty scheduling shifts due to a dwindling number of volunteers, but also keeping and attracting adequate staff.
The Town Council has repeatedly said it will consider modeling its EMS Department after the police department. Current Culver EMS Director Ruth Allman says it’s always hoped that shifts can be filled.
“One thing that I tried to do was adjust the wages to allow the hiring of more people, and this was very early on as me being the director and now what I’m running into is we’re not really competitive on our wages to our surrounding areas,” says Allman.
Among the first steps the Culver Town Council took is planning to hire a paid EMS Director. Wages discussed were in the range of about 45-thousand dollars after researching appropriate pay. The hours an EMS director will work are under contention as well.
The lack of a quality organizing is allowing basic functions – such as paying bills to fall through the cracks, according to the discussion.
How to pay for some of the changes under consideration was also brought up during a work session meeting, Tuesday night. Culver is hitting the maximum rate allowable on its property tax levy.
Town Council President Ginny Bess Munroe says they need to think about taking the next step.
“Now that we’ve got SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures) we’re one step closer, if we make that full-time position a director position, we’ve got a nice job description written for it already, you know, maybe that’s our next step is to hire in a full-time director,” says Munroe.
No action was taken during the work session meeting, but the Culver Town Council agreed to begin advertising for an EMS Director at their regular meeting that followed.
