April 27, 2023 at 11:22 a.m.
Oneida County sends 2024 ambulance service contracts to Arbor Vitae, Lac du Flambeau
The Arbor Vitae proposal was brought up during the April 18 town board meeting just prior to the annual meeting.
In October, the town board approved a $110,000 contract for 2023.
Oneida County sheriff Grady Hartman, representing the Oneida County board's public safety committee, had originally approached the town with a $170,000 contract but that amount was, through some negotiation, eventually reduced to $110,000.
Prior to that, the town had paid an average of $85,000 a year to Oneida County.
Hartman has said the town contracts have increased due to increases the county has received from Aspirus Health.
Arbor Vitae is one of two Vilas County towns with which Oneida County has ambulance service contracts. The other is Lac du Flambeau.
Lac du Flambeau has its own ambulance service, a fact pointed out several times during that town board's discussions with Hartman and the Oneida County public safety committee before a 2023 ambulance contract was agreed to there.
Arbor Vitae town chairman Frank Bauers brought up the 2024 contract proposal from Oneida County in the letters and correspondence portion of last week's town board meeting.
"We just got this today from our friendly sheriff in Oneida County, who more or less handles the ambulance appropriations for the Oneida County ambulance system," he said. adding that two years before, the town was paying $85,000.
"Next year, they want $227,000," Bauers said of the Oneida County proposal, which is $227,303. "You know, we're talking about 18 percent of our budget. A $1.5 million budget and they want 18 percent of it with no end in sight. That's something we'll have to work on."
The contract proposal for Lac du Flambeau for 2024 is $291, 514.
The Lac du Flambeau town board, which came to agreement with Oneida County in mid-January on a $178,000 contract for 2023, originally received its proposed contract on April 18 but it was withdrawn by Oneida County because, according to Dan Hess, chief deputy of the Oneida County's Sheriff's Office, "the last one was wrong." "Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused," he wrote in an April 21 email to town clerk Nancy Edwards.
Hartman told The Lakeland Times with the contracts expiring at the end of the year, his goal was to get the 2024 proposal to the towns earlier than in 2023 "as soon as the new board was seated."
"We wanted to get that out," he said. "To get it rolling."
On Monday,LdF chairman Matt Gaulke said he'll probably have the ambulance contract proposal on a June town board meeting agenda.
"I have all kinds of fires going in all directions," he said, a reference to, among other matters, the town's ongoing negotiations with the tribal council of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians regarding expired easements on four roads. "The (ambulance) contract isn't due until December or January but we're gonna have to talk about it ... probably in June."
Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected]
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