Ambulance Authority - Regular Meeting

Now it's starting May 21, 2026, 5 p.m. We'll take a roll. Everybody's here except Q. So we have a quorum. We're going to move down to the agenda. Does everybody look over the agenda and want to add anything or take anything away? Do you want to add that to the agenda? No.

Okay. We'll just move it on next month.

I mean, you can talk about it on. When I do mine? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you can mention it then. Okay. So if nobody wants to add anything, I'll move for a motion to approve. I have a motion to approve in a second. All in favor by saying aye. Aye. All right. All opposed? None. Motion carries. Public comments? Jackie, you got anything you want to say? All right. He's good. Okay. Minutes?

Motion to approve.

All right. Motion to approve the minutes. Second?

Okay.

All right. We have a second?

Second.

All in favor say an aye. Aye. All opposed? Aye. All right, write-offs. We've got one set here, write-offs. This is for April. $6,004.01. None of them marks. That's a bad year, bad month. $15,482.18. Do I hear a motion to approve? Motion to approve both months. Okay, we have a motion. Second. We have a second. All in favor say an aye. Aye. Motion carries.

It's the largest we've had in a while.

Morning financial report. If you've got any questions, we'll attempt to answer them.

Do we need to sign those, right?

Yes, sir. Yeah, they get passed around. Oh, did you sign them? I did. Jay had them. It needs to go that way. Yeah, it needs to go that way.

I think everything's running pretty smooth. If not, she would have been contacting somebody.

She's out of town this week, but I haven't heard anything from her. Right.

All right. She would have said something in the budget meetings if anything was out of whack, but everything's pretty good. All right. We'll move on from that. Director's report.

Last month, 926 calls. Gets the annual number up to 3,500. It was down from the previous month and up from last year. We're still averaging about 33 calls a day. Nothing unusual there. The last column I changed so that 10,695 is what I am projecting we will run if we keep going at the pace we're going. Just to give you a comparison of last year's was 10,976. And if we keep running like we're running now, we'll be right about the same number. So kind of flat line as far as call volume. Now, obviously, it's a projection based on just a few months. So it will change as the year goes by. Calls by zone, again, New Union was a little up. But other than that, everybody's kind of where they've been running here lately. Manchester's average will come up because it keeps being the busy station. But because my average goes all the way back to 2013, it takes a long time for the average to kind of inch up to follow the numbers. These are all well within their normal timelines. You can see the average below each one, and they are just right there, very close to what they've run ever since 2013. So nothing unusual there. Unit status is, because the fleet is aging, maintenance costs are up. Excuse me, but not, oh my gosh, up, but they're up a little bit. Of course, you know we have one on order. I did get a memo from the Custom Works who won the bid. Chevrolet has gotten where they're not gonna build the chassis that make ambulances anymore. And he sent a copy of that letter. I forwarded it to Mariana to put with the budget. When I bid it out, I bid out a Ford or a Chevrolet chassis. So it could be either one. But we wanted gasoline. Chevrolet is only going to make diesels in that 3500 series. and paul and i just adamantly believe that we need to go back to a gas fleet the fuel is so much cheaper you don't have the death fluid to put up with our gasoline engines are lasting as long as the diesel engines now and so it's just to me it's the right answer so we're going to switch to a ford chassis still up 35 let's see 3500 350 thank you one of them was four digits have to get them an F-350, four-wheel drive, still have the liquid springs, still have literally everything that we wanted, still be gasoline. It'll just be a Ford instead of a Chevy because Chevy doesn't want to make gasolines. And the liquid springs push the Chevy over the weight limit. okay yeah and liquid springs we're very happy with crews are very happy they give a much better ride than just the most standard one ton suspension so um so that is a change it shouldn't affect anything it didn't affect the price of the unit and it didn't affect the bid specs because i had bid it could go either way so but i had them send me a letter to put in a file should the state auditor question why There was a change. So I think, I hadn't heard from Mary Ann, I assume that that's okay. If we need more, then we'll get more. So we're still waiting. He did not say it would make it any faster.

No. Did he give you an estimate?

Well, it was 18 months when he got the bid, which has been, what, two or three months ago or something like that. So still a ways out.

So if you put an order in today, it would be another 18 months? Yeah.

There is an option that I want, but I don't know how to bid it out. We do a remount, right? We take one of our trucks and we take one of our boxes and take it off and put it back on the new chassis. That's called a remount, and we've done that multiple times. A lot of the companies now are doing remounts except they're not taking my box, they're just taking somebody else's box that they traded in and putting it on a new chassis. So it's a remount, but it's not our remount, it's not our box. And then they're selling them. And they're a little cheaper than a complete new unit along the price of a remount. But it's kind of as they get one built, they put it on the market and then it sells. So if I bid it out, Then by the time the bid process is done, the unit's done bought. Somebody done bought. There's so many private companies in EMS now who can just call up and say, well, yeah, I want that one, and write them a check three days later, and they're done. So we're struggling.

Are these on, like us, like at the sheriff's office, are ambulances on the state contract?

There is a, there's, there is a, it's not quite the same. They're, SAVIC, you know what that is? No. There's companies who go and do all these bidding processes and they get them approved.

Oh, we do like buy board.

Okay, there's three or four different ones.

Yeah, there's a buy board. There's another one I can't remember.

Where if you buy that, you don't have to go through the bid process because they've already done it.

Yeah, it's a competitive bid that's a pool where it allows you to piggyback off of that bid.

but you can't do that with these because these are little one-offs that somebody's remounting it depends on the age of the box that they're remounting you know there's not a that's my problem is figuring out how to bid it out i get the emails i see the truck that looks great i like that one but by the time i wrote the bid specs and got it turned in and then got it bidded out and waited a month for the bids to come back in yeah that truck's long gone but you're not bidding on it

you're trying to purchase it outright the county yeah but ours has a 50 000 threshold for anything purchased over 50 unless it's only that we have to bid it to other people yes but even if there's i mean you're not really there's not another that's where i was going to go is i wonder if they have a sole source letter

something so to speak to say this is it you can only buy that one here i wonder if that works i i'm i don't know that it's a con i'm seeing if it'll stick i don't know so that would work and it would get us a truck very quickly in this coming like budget you know we could sure but but I don't know how to make sure the auditors are happy with how we do it. Do you know companies that do that, that practice that? Not in county government.

Or a member of certain, like what Mike explained, i can't remember the name of it well we can't think of the other one that's a big one savick is one um uh that's it yeah the county the county already does source well right if that company happens to be on source well you can do it through them and just buy it i thought because i looked into it the source well ones like it's a specific This truck, this engine, this, you know. Yeah, because what I've got is.

I don't think it's just a company and anything from that company.

No, it isn't. It's like where we bought laptops. It was GTAC computers. Right. So we bought, GTAC's got it. It was for this laptop.

Right. And so I don't think they, because these are little one-offs that they just, when they trade in, like when we trade in an old truck, you know, they take our box off and fix it up and try to sell it to somebody else.

You're going to get some weird specs. Like this is a 2020. 20 chassis with a mount with a 2026 or whatever yeah 2026 chassis with it with a 2020 box yeah and it's the gas blah blah blah you know and if you want it it's this product take it at this and it's sold and you're like well how do we yeah by the time i get through the process i get an emergency mariana this is we're not bidding it we're right i need to jump on it because we've got Eight.

Four trucks with over 200,000.

And how many of those are going to time out in the next 18 months?

mile out timeout whatever yeah they'll i mean as long as they pass state inspection we can keep running them but they become a maintenance nightmare you know because things keep breaking because they got 230 000 miles on them and they're not easy miles anyway i'm going to talk to marianna yeah and i got to make her understand that what i'm asking and then see what there's an answer that would be a way we could get a truck sooner some way to do that And that's, yeah, I feel like there should be. I just don't know what it is. And I talked to purchasing. He didn't have a, you know, oh, yeah, we do that all the time.

No, that is a one-off kind of thing.

Right. So, anyway, that's just no, I'm trying to look into an option like that.

Excuse me.

Other than that, they're all running and doing well, but the maintenance costs are starting to go up. And we talked about when we did budget, we put more money in maintenance because we know older fleets tear up things. We put one transmission in this budget year, I believe, was the one big thing, but like injector pump went out. By the time the injector pump goes out, you need to put all eight injectors in because the trash that came out of the injector pump now clogs up all eight of your injectors. You know, those turn into big repair bills. Yeah, and the pump is like buried somewhere down in the guts.

You know, it takes $1,000 labor just to get to it.

Anyway, other than that, status of the units. Staffing, we are actually very good. We've got all of our EMT slots filled. If we had two more medics, we would have all of our five units a day would be staffed. Five more medics and we could pull the captains off like we've been trying to do for years. But of course, I've got two out on comp. One of them has been out a long time. The other one was in that wreck that we talked about last meeting. She's going through... Never can remember. It's not PT. I mean, it is PT, but it's got a specific name about getting them ready to work their job again. Occupational therapy. No, it's not PT or OT. FCE.

What? Functional capacity exam. No.

Paul, do you remember that? I do not.

Work hardening.

it's like it's like it's two hours a day it's work we call it work hardening and then three hours a day and then you advance right start lifting little stuff yeah you're lifting heavier and then more and more and more until they say okay now you're cleared to go back to work she's doing that looking at mid-june and she i mean she wants to come she's ready to come back but she's got to get through that um still have one hour medical Uh, which means I can't hire, you know, those two final slots. I've got a couple of part timers that are working real regular and helping fill them. And so it's not as terrible as if they just were empty slots. Um, but obviously I'd like to, to get that kind of fixed. Other than that, staffing is looking better on a day to day basis. You're always going to have your weird days when three people all caught the same whatever it was. But other than that, it's much greener than it has been, so I'm happy with that. Any questions on any of that? That's all I got. No, it's not all I got because we just talked about the other thing. Why don't you just mention that? Okay. We have an MOU with Tullahoma Fire that allows them to be dispatched simultaneously with us and help us on the scene with medical procedures. Manchester Fire would like to do the same thing, same MOU. They have a different list of things they want to respond to that would be simultaneously dispatched out. Their mayor, I believe, has already signed it, their fire chief, and now they've got to get the supplies and they've got to get – there's a little checklist of things from the state that I got in an email today. I haven't even told you, but – You'll get it as well. Paul has already sent them the original list of – to-do list. they're working on that they don't have but one AMT that I know of but they got some EMRs and and they're willing and they want to and so obviously we'd love to let them help us so but they have to do all that so there that's in the process and and I guess I said I got the email today from my state regional consultant saying here's what they have to do, and so they will work on that. And then next meeting, hopefully they'll have all the steps and we can sign off on the MOU.

Right. We'll have the MOU next meeting and we'll just, you know, if everything looks fine, we'll sign off on everything and get them going.

Anybody got any issues with them responding? Yeah, I did. i think they've already put that into well they did and then it was figured out wait a minute the horse in front of the cart in front of the horse well they they didn't want to be first responders initially They've had issues somewhere in their political realm. That's the best I can tell you. Not that I want to. I don't know. But I think they must have got some of that worked out or a change in leadership. I don't know. And so now they finally are, you know, but they have to have certain medical supplies and things like that.

So have they already started responding with you all?

They told the comm center they wanted to. But then we've had to back back out because the state says they can't until we get all these pieces of paper in order. Yeah, until we sign all the documents. So they're ready. Well, not ready, but they're willing. And they can still respond on car wrecks. And there's a few things where their fire service is related. We signed off on him.

Yeah, we signed off, and I knew there were some bugs to work out. But I didn't realize that had came down from the state. So that's good to know.

And so they got, yeah. We're going to have to back out until they've got everything to make the state happy. Right. All right.

Okay. Now that's all I got. We will take that on next month. All right. Any old business? If none, new business, don't have any old ambulance, tell them the police department. Okay.

Someone in the police department contacted me about an old ambulance to be used in their SWAT team, for their SWAT team. And we have two old retired ambulances that are still owned by us. One we're trading in for this one that's on order when it ever gets here, so it's spoken for. The other one was one that we originally tried to turn into a command unit, pull the cot out and did some cabinetry, put a lot of spine boards and things like that in it. but then we got the ambu bus and it kind of trumped that and so we feel like we don't need that old ambulance anymore so it still looks if you look the outside still looks like an old ambulance but the cabinetry was reworked a little bit anyway so paul and i both agree that it is just collecting dust i mean and so if we can donate it to the police department, then they can get some new life out of it, and that gets it out of our inventory, gets it off of our insurance, you know, gets it off our maintenance budget. Y'all have any?

You said it's for their SWAT team?

Mm-hmm.

Do we need a motion for that?

Yeah, I know, yeah. I need a motion for that to do that. Motion to approve. So we'll discuss it.

Second.

I got a motion and a second. Any discussion on that? Everybody good with that?

Talk to Marianna. it has to go to purchasing they have to call a special meeting of some committee of theirs to get rid of the asset but but nobody saw a problem with it it's just again a couple of hoops to jump through okay to my knowledge no money has to exchange hands you know just gets title moved all right well come to motion in a second if there's no other discussion all in favor say aye aye

Any opposed? Motion carries. So that's good. All right. Next meeting will be the June, third Thursday in June, 5 o'clock. So all I need right now is a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Okay. All in favor by saying aye. Aye.

Good. Aye.