Soapbox

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY SCOTT ZOGELMAN
First, we thank the county commission for their recent decision to pay for the radios for Florence Ambulance Service. This is an important step in maintaining our quality service.

But I also want to express my thoughts and the thoughts of some of the personnel in our department.

Florence Ambulance Service is the only independent EMS in Marion County and the only true volunteer department. We cover the area from Hague?s Hill south to the Butler County line, including the cities of Florence and Burns. We also cover several townships in Chase County, including Cedar Point.

All of the people that live in our coverage area pay taxes. We pay sales tax and the 911 tax. A portion of the sales tax, as I understand it, is earmarked for emergency services to be used for the purchase of equipment by these departments.

Am I wrong in assuming that the portion of sales tax collected from our coverage area should be used in our coverage area?

Every time we request a portion of this money, we are made to feel like we are begging for a handout. The reports in the papers make it appear that we are receiving something ?special? from the county.

Commissioner Bob Hein expressed concern ?that if the county paid for budget items for Florence EMS, other cities would come with similar requests.?

The reason the money was requested is that Marion County EMS, which represents all of those ?other cities,? recently requested and received more than $17,000 for radio equipment. Florence had to then request to receive what we feel is our share of the pie. We take our cue from the county when they receive money.

To my knowledge this is only the third time in the last 10 years that we have requested our cut of the sales tax and 911 money.

Maybe a better way of handling the distribution of this money would be that every time Marion County EMS receives money, a percentage of that amount is put into a budget for Florence.

The article also reported that the opposition to the request come from the other commissioners, who said they wished Florence was a part of the county-wide EMS department.

Our crew members annually discuss and agree to remain independent. Marion, Hillsboro, Peabody, Tampa, and all of the first responder units are ?county.? They all started as independent services and at the time they were no longer able to maintain their own service for whatever reason, they joined the county.

At some point Florence might do the same.

I stated earlier we are the only volunteer department. We do not get paid! We get one dollar per monthly meeting which we attend. But we leave the money in our budget instead of accepting it personally so at the end of the year we can use it to pay for our Christmas dinner.

Marion County EMS personnel get paid for runs and on-call time, which is fine. But by us remaining volunteer-based on the number of calls we had last year, we saved our community a minimum of $32,000 in unpaid wages.

Why would the county want us to join them? I have no problem with joining the county at some point, but I feel the $32,000 could be better used by us investing in first-rate equipment such as radios.

Florence is the oldest ambulance service in the county and we are proud of that. We also feel we have the best response times in the county and provide first-rate service. As long as we are able to maintain this, I see no reason to join the county.

I have the utmost respect for the other departments in the county and am always willing to cooperate fully whenever we are called. I hope we can expect the same from them.

JoAnn Knak was my teacher and I have the utmost respect for her knowledge and dedication to the EMS system. She has done a fine job pulling the county together and managing personnel. I consider her a friend and ally.

But in the same breath I feel it was unprofessional for someone to have her come to the meeting and to ask for her opinion of our request. Does the director of Marion County EMS have input as to whether Florence Ambulance Service gets its share of the money?

Scott Zogelman is director of the Florence Ambulance Service.

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