Updated plans for an addition to the Winamac ambulance garage were presented to the Pulaski County Commissioners Monday. EMS Director Bryan Corn said he’s scaled the proposal back significantly from what former EMS Director Nikki Lowry had requested last year. “We took the porch off. We don’t need the porch,” he said. “We took all the interior rooms out. We don’t need the interior rooms. We can make it work without having the interior rooms in there. So essentially what this would be is just an open addition onto the garage.”
The main concern is providing enough room to park the county’s ambulances, since they barely fit in their existing space. Corn said his proposal would do that. “Even this, kind of crunching the numbers, if we go to a different style ambulance, like next year, this would still leave us plenty of room,” he explained. “By taking those interior rooms out, we would still have plenty of room to be able to walk behind it, pull the stretchers out, if we’re cleaning the inside of the ambulances, things like that. That would still give us plenty of room to be able to do that.” Corn said that under his plan, the wash bay where would stay where it is, but a larger garage door would be installed and a second wash area could possibly be added.
He also told the commissioners that he discussed his ideas with Maintenance Supervisor Jeff Johnston. “The only real concern Jeff had was we may need to get a bigger breaker box out in the garage than we currently have,” Corn said. “He said we would probably need that. And he goes, it may be a little cheaper if we don’t take the entire north wall, if we don’t take all of that out.” Corn said he plans to get cost estimates for both the partial and complete removal of the wall.
He encouraged the commissioners to review the proposed plans and offer input, before giving their official approval.
