Pulaski County EMS Director Proposes Adding Training Program Finances into Department Budget

Pulaski County Emergency Medical Services is taking steps to formalize the finances of its training program. During a public hearing on the county’s 2019 budget last week, EMS Director Bryan Corn told the county council that his department is certified to offer emergency medical technician classes. But he said the training program’s finances haven’t been tracked properly.

“So State Board of Accounts has looked at things. Recently, [Auditor] Laura [Wheeler] and I have kind of been beating our heads against the wall and trying to figure out what would be the best way to do this going forward,” he said. “What we’ve come up with is the safest way would be to take the training institute and incorporate it as part of our budget out of the General Fund.”

Corn is asking the council to add three line items into the EMS budget: one to receive students’ training fees, one to pay for training materials like textbooks, and one to pay instructors’ wages. “So over about the last day and a half, I’ve been kind of crunching numbers, putting together, looking up costs of books, looking at things,” he told council members, “which I’ll admit is really hard to kind of project, considering over the years, this is something that really has never been tracked and really never been run right.”

Corn’s preliminary estimate for materials expenses was $13,000 for 2019. He estimated $15,000 for instructors’ wages, using his own hourly wage as a guide.

He added that the training program provides a valuable service to the local community, giving firefighters a local option for first responder training. The classes also serve as something of a recruitment tool for the EMS department, since graduates are occasionally offered jobs there.

The county council is expected to consider the requested changes when it finalizes the county’s 2019 budget on October 8.