Winchester holds off on Oneida County ambulance contract

The Winchester town board is holding off on formal approval of a new contract with Oneida County to provide ambulance service. 

The town, which has its own volunteer ambulance service, is part of the newly formed Northwoods Emergency Services District (NEMSD) with the towns of Boulder Junction, Presque Isle and Manitowish Waters. 

Over the course of the past several months, the NEMSD board of directors has been putting things in place for the targeted startup of district operations, which is supposed to take place in January. 

With a director hired, temporary quarters for ambulance crews and the first year’s budget finally set, interviews were conducted over  the past couple weeks to establish the NEMSD’s full-time ambulance crews. 

The NEMSD board has also offered a mutual aid-type agreement to Oneida County. 

In the meantime, towns like Winchester are looking at a new contract with Oneida County that would result in an $1,800 per run charge. 

The Winchester board met in special session on Dec. 20 to consider the proposed contract with Oneida County. 

Town chairman Joe Discianno said the town board was “going to but then decided not to” take action on the proposed contract “only because the contract doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“There’s a couple clauses ... that just aren’t making sense,” he said.

Discianno said Steve Herzberg, a member of the NEMSD board and also a paramedic with the Manitowish Waters Fire Company and the Winchester ambulance service, has urged the town not to renew the contract with Oneida County. 

The current contract, which Discianno said the town signed “about a year ago,” has a $400 intercept fee. 

“That contract actually runs until 2028,” he said. “So, this was something, I think, that is completely different.”

He’s correct; Oneida County Sheriff Grady Hartman has said the $1,800 fee would only be charged by Oneida County if one of its ambulance crews needed to respond to Winchester and care for a patient from the time that crew arrived at the scene up to the time the patient was brought to a hospital by that ambulance crew. 

“I know all the other towns are dealing with this same thing,” Discianno said. “Basically, we want our attorney to look at what they’ve sent us.”

He said another concern is that no one from the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office or the Oneida County board’s public safety committee, which essentially directed Hartman to approach towns like Winchester with the contract, “will communicate with us.”

“They won’t return emails, phone calls,” Discianno said. “I think the only one that we’ve been able to talk to a little bit is the sheriff (Hartman) but he isn’t going to be able to answer these questions.”

 He said there have been efforts to set up a meeting “for months” with Oneida County representatives regarding the new contract “and we’ve gotten nowhere.”

“Absolutely nowhere,” Discianno said. “Which is kind of ridiculous but we’re also thinking they can’t legally deny somebody that’s in need of an ambulance from coming up here. Because basically, what they’re saying is  if we don’t sign this, they aren’t coming.”

He said the NEMSD has tried to schedule a meeting with Oneida County officials regarding the district’s mutual aid proposal as well. 

“I don’t know what the problem is,” Discianno said, adding that when the contract was presented to the town of Winchester in August, he met with Oneida County officials “for a whopping five minutes.”

“They said ‘We need to do this because we need to buy new ambulances,’” he said. “That was kind of their excuse at the time. It just didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.”

Discianno said there has been some offline discussion regarding the issue among Vilas County town officials at a meeting of the Landfill Venture Group in Arbor Vitae on Dec. 13.

“I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of upset people over this,” he said. 

A copy of the new contract, which is supposed to take effect Jan. 1, has been sent to town attorney Steve Garbowicz for review, he added.

Little contact

Hartman told The Lakeland Times “we don’t go to Winchester very often” and if Garbowicz reviews the Winchester contract and needs to “tweak that we’ll probably go along with that.”

As for the communication piece, he said no one from the town of Winchester has been in contact with him regarding the contract since it was presented. 

“The Northwoods EMS group has tried,” Hartman said. “We’ll see how it plays out. We’ve been waiting to hear from a number of towns ... we’ll be as patient as we can.”

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].