By LeAnn R. Ralph
BOYCEVILLE — After the ambulance service director and an EMT were called out on a run, the Boyceville Community Ambulance District Board tabled until next month a policy on the EMT roster but did begin discussing a complaint and behavior policy.
About fifteen or 20 minutes into the February 9 meeting of the Boyceville ambulance district board, Wayne Dow, ambulance service director, and another EMT, left the meeting at the Boyceville Village Hall on Charlotte Street to go out on a service call.
The policy includes a job description for Emergency Medical Responders (EMRs), Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and Advanced Emergency Medical Technicians (AEMTs).
Part of the requirement listed in the policy is that EMTs, EMRs and AEMTs are required to attend, at a minimum, half of all business meetings and training meetings each year, although the ambulance chief may allow an exemption at his or her discretion.
The policy also requires EMTs, EMRs and AEMTs to provide 24 hours of call coverage each month, although the ambulance service chief may allow an exemption at his or her discretion.
The Boyceville ambulance service has several EMTs currently away at college, so allowing the chief to make exemptions for meetings and call coverage is a way to handle that, said Pete Score, representative for the Town of Sheridan and chair of the ambulance district board.
Score noted that during the recent break, one student had picked up shifts while school was not in session.
Since Dow had to leave the meeting, Score suggested tabling the policy until next month.
The Boyceville ambulance board unanimously approved tabling the policy.
Behavior policy
The ambulance district board must development employment policies, said Sonya Zebro, representative for the Village of Boyceville on the ambulance district board, adding that she would like to see the board include “an open door policy.”
After talking to some of the EMTs on staff, Zebro said they do not feel they know the board members or can talk to them.
If there is some kind of discrepancy or problems with the work environment, the EMTs should be able to come to the ambulance district board, and it is up to the board to get to know the EMTs better, she said.
A meeting of the EMTs was scheduled on February 21, and Zebro and Score agreed to attend the meeting to introduce themselves.
With the policy changes that are in the works, the board can be an outlet for the EMTs if needed, Zebro said.
If the EMTs do not feel they can come to the board, it can contribute to a hostile environment, she said.
The ambulance district board also must work on disciplinary procedures and have steps for employee discipline when there are disciplinary issues, Zebro said.
The policy must set guidelines and establish consequences, such as a verbal warning, written warning, suspension and then termination of employment, she said.
That kind of a policy would be useful for the fire department as well, said Bob Anderson, representative for the Town of Stanton.
Score said he would inform Dow of the board’s intentions and would begin researching employment policies.
Facilitator
Reaching out to the EMTs would be a good policy for the board, said Ned Hahn, representative for the Town of Hay River.
Score referenced the letters that former EMTs had given to Jeff Carlsrud, a supervisor on the New Haven Town Board.
The letters said “fire your chief and then we’ll come back,” he said.
The dozen or so EMTs who resigned from the Boyceville ambulance service last April resigned in protest because they did not want the ambulance district board to hire Dow as the ambulance service director.
Dow grew up in Boyceville and is a retired paramedic who served with Dubuque Fire and Rescue in Dubuque, Iowa, for 24 years. He served for 14 years as the EMS supervisor and the ambulance service director.
Dubuque has a population of 60,000.
The EMTs, who announced that they intended to resign after the ambulance district board had formally adjourned the April 14, 2021, meeting, said they were resigning because the board had not listened to them and had not hired the director they wanted.
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April 2, 2021, interim ambulance service director Andres Kissh wrote that he felt, “we needed to make sure that the BCAD Board was made very much aware of what their decision was going to do to the service and the community.”
Reasonable
Telling the ambulance district board to fire the chief and “then we’ll come back,” is not being reasonable and it is not negotiation, Score said.
“They want it their way,” he said.
Perhaps a facilitator, someone who is not a member of the ambulance district board, would be helpful, said Chuck Siler, representative for the Town of Tiffany.
They are saying they will not come back as EMTs unless “we do this or that,” but maybe they would be more responsive talking to someone who is not on the board, he said.
Some of the EMTs who resigned were not from Boyceville, and two or three of them on the roster who who resigned who were local may have “got caught up in the gang,” Hahn said.
One would hope those who are local would consider the community, “but maybe not. Maybe not if it doesn’t happen ‘this way,’” he said.
Coverage agreements
In response to a question from Score during a discussion of the invoices for January, which Dow was able answer before he left the meeting, a total of $4,000 was not paid out of the budget in January for EMT wages.
The annual budgeted amount for EMT wages, since there are not enough EMTs to always cover the shifts, could be used to pay for the coverage agreements with Colfax, Glenwood City and Menomonie, Score noted.
The coverage agreements for January to have Colfax, Glenwood City and Menomonie cover ambulance calls when Boyceville did not have a second EMT to go out on run was about $6,000.
Report
So far this year, Boyceville’s ambulance calls have increased significantly, Dow said during his report to the ambulance district board.
As of February 9, Boyceville has gone out on 32 runs so far this year, with 25 of those runs occurring since the meeting in January, he said.
Boyceville was able to take five patients, while Menomonie responded to seven calls, plus two that were cancelled at the scene, and Glenwood City responded to two calls while an additional two calls were cancelled while on the way, Dow said.
Four calls resulted in no transport, another call was in response to a car accident, but the ambulance was cancelled enroute, and two of the calls were for fire stand-by, he said.
In January, there were two people on duty at the ambulance station 53.1 percent of the time, and 46.9 percent of the time there was one person on duty, Dow said.
So far in February, there have been two people on duty 62 percent of the time, with one person on duty 36.5 percent of the time, and the ambulance was taken out of service for three hours, he said.
Roster
The Boyceville ambulance service roster currently has 15 people, including one EMR, seven EMTs and seven AEMts, Dow said.
Out of those on the roster, 11 are active and four are considered in-active, he said.
One new AEMT started working the week of the ambulance district board meeting, and Dow said he had interviewed another EMT.
All together, six people are currently attending classes, including two people who intend to become EMRs and four who are planning to be EMTs, Dow said.
The EMT candidates will be taking their tests for certification in May, he said.
At that point, Dow left the meeting to go out on the ambulance call.
Public comments
Although recent ambulance district board meetings have have had about 40 people in the audience, there were about a dozen people at the February 9 meeting.
Three people signed up to make public comments.
Nilla Harnisch noted that the ambulance service is intended to help keep people safe and that she believed the community is safe with the personnel at the ambulance service.
The community, however, feels “unfriendly,” she said.
Everyone in the community must work together to resolve the issues, Harnisch said.
Carl Hackbarth, a supervisor on the Stanton Town Board, said he had been asked about his support for Wayne Dow and that he supported Dow as the ambulance director both as a supervisor on the town board and as a citizen.
Hackbarth said he was more interested in considering “facts vs. Facebook” and referenced malicious e-mail and text messages and threats made against Marv Prestrud, representative on the ambulance district board from the Town of New Haven.
“This is not what this community is about,” Hackbarth said.
There were two EMTs at the meeting, and they went out on a call, and “that was good to see,” he said.
Hackbarth noted that Kissh had been one of the EMTs who had transported Hackbarth to Rochester and that Kissh had been personable and professional during the ambulance run.
“I could not believe his actions over the last six months,” he said.
Tony Pember, a resident in the Town of Sherman, said he objected to Cory Green, fire chief, having to make his comments at the last ambulance district meeting during the public comments.
Green should have been seated at the table with ambulance district board, he said.
Emergency services need to work together, Pember said.
Pember said he was not comfortable with the ambulance service and did not feel that people were “getting their money’s worth.”
At the last ambulance district meeting, Dow had mentioned that one solution, if EMTs continued to be in short supply, would be to merge the ambulance service with Colfax or to try to sell the ambulance service, although representatives for Mayo have said they did not want to buy the Boyceville service.
Pember said he did not want anyone from Colfax or Mayo, that he wanted “people in the community,” and that the ambulance district board should “work with the previous group.”
Next meeting
The Boyceville Community Ambulance District Board will meet next on March 16 at the Boyceville Village Hall on Charlotte Street immediately following the fire district board meeting at 6:30 p.m.
The regularly scheduled meeting for the ambulance district board would have been March 9, but since all of the ambulance district board members, except Score, also serve on the fire district board, they believed it made more sense to meet on the same evening rather than have a separate meeting night.
The Boyceville Community Fire District Board typically meets at the fire station.
The ambulance district board met at the fire station following the fire board meeting in December, but Green, as the fire chief, told Score the ambulance board was not welcome to use the fire station at the quarterly meetings of the fire board since the Town of Sheridan is a not member of the Boyceville fire district.
Score pointed out that the ambulance district board, or perhaps more specifically as the chair of ambulance district board, is not welcome to meet at the fire station, which prompted a number of the board members to say the fire station belongs to the community, and that when it was built, the fire station was constructed with a meeting room that was also intended to be used for board meetings.
Siler, who is chair of the fire district board, scheduled the next meeting of the Boyceville Community Fire Board at the Boyceville Village Hall on Charlotte Street on March 16 at 6:30 p.m.
One agenda item for the Boyceville fire board meeting will be to consider when the Boyceville fire district meets quarterly whether the ambulance board should also hold that particular meeting at the fire hall, rather than all of them packing up, driving across the street to the village hall, and then setting up for the ambulance meeting.
Members of the Boyceville Ambulance District Board decided it would be best to meet monthly during Dow’s first year as the director and considering the current personnel problems for the ambulance service.
The ambulance district board had been meeting monthly at the ambulance station — which requires pulling an ambulance out of the bay, parking it outside, and setting up tables and chairs for the meeting — but the Boyceville Village Board offered the use of the village hall for the monthly meetings.
