NEMSD board offers mutual aid agreement to Oneida County

In June, the Oneida County board’s public safety committee made the decision to charge towns outside the county not already on contract for ambulance service $1,800 for each run.

This will go into effect on Jan. 1.

Oneida County Sheriff Grady Hartman was directed to work with those towns and Hartman told The Lakeland Times in late August his department’s chief deputy Terri Hook and Jacob Simpkins, the county’s emergency management director, began visiting town officials, mostly in Vilas County, to make them aware of the change. 

“We’ve been charging for ambulance intercepts ($400 for an Oneida County ambulance meeting another ambulance from a town on a call) and now we’re going to start charging if we actually go to these towns and take their calls,” Hartman said then. “We have been doing some of that.”

He said the county wouldn’t charge for something like a mass casualty event and there are other situations, such as contracts in place with towns such as Lac du Flambeau and Arbor Vitae, that would be exempt from the $1,800 per run charge from Oneida County. 

Over the course of the past few years, the Vilas County towns of Manitowish Waters, Presque Isle, Boulder Junction and Winchester have been forming the Northwoods Emergency Medical services District (NEMSD). Hartman told the Times in theory, “they shouldn’t need us” once that four-town EMS district starts operations.

Tremendous deal

Since that time, the four member NEMSD board of directors recently formulated a budget for 2025, which is to be its first year of operation, which board president John Hanson has said he’d like to see start by the end of this year. 

One of the NEMSDA board members is Steve Herzberg, an emergency medical technician (EMT) with the Winchester fire department and the Manitowish Waters Fire Company, who provided a brief overview of where things are with Oneida County during the town board’s Oct. 7 meeting.

He said the district had made a mutual aid proposal to Oneida County. 

“It is a tremendous deal for them,” Herzberg said. “I mean, they have no backup now and we offered that and they turned us down and we do not know why they turned us down.”

He said Oneida County has continued to send to the towns what he described as a “demand letter.”

“We won’t sign that because we are most apt to take care of our own town,” Herzberg said. “However, they (Oneida County) also made a threat in that letter that they would remove us from dispatch and would not dispatch any ambulances into our area. I’m not sure what that threat means right now.”

He said he would be working on a letter that “the four town chairs are going to sign” asking the Oneida County public safety committee to meet with representatives of the four towns “so we can figure out why in the world they (public safety committee) would turn us down. I have a strong belief it was never presented to them directly.”

Herzberg said Oneida County was attempting to recoup money from the towns because of its increased costs charged by Aspirus. 

“They’re not totally irrational,” he said of the public safety committee’s reasoning. “Because if they continue to send ambulances with no compensation, that’s not right. It would be the same if we would send ambulances down there but that’s where mutual aid comes in ... we can give them a paramedic response. There only two agencies that could give them a paramedic response, us and Eagle River. That’s a fair trade.”

Controlling costs

Hartman told the Times there was a meeting with Herzberg and NEMSD director Jason Joling on Sept. 11 and he acknowledged the mutual aid offer from the district.

He also echoed the “they shouldn’t need us” sentiment expressed to the Times in late August. 

“We’re more interested in an agreement where if they call us, they pay us and if we call them, we’ll pay them,” he said. “I don’t ever see using them. That’s the issue.”

“If we have not executed an agreement with your Town, we will not be providing ambulance service beginning January 1, 2025 unless there is a critical incident,” the Aug. 30 letter from Hook to the towns reads. 

Hartman didn’t disagree with Herzberg’s interpretation of that being a threat to the towns but in a different context and used non-payment of a bill as an example. 

“It’s a threat as much as if you don’t pay your Verizon bill, they’ll cut your service off,” he said.

Hartman said Herzberg and Joling “basically acknowledged as well” during the Sept. 11 meeting that once the NEMSD commences operations, Oneida County ambulances won’t be needed outside of a mass casualty event. 

“When they have two rigs going for those four towns, in theory, they should be plenty covered,” he said. “I don’t see them really needing us too much which is why I don’t think it would be a bad thing for them to sign that contract with us because if both their rigs are out and all of a sudden, a third call comes in, which is a once in a blue moon type of deal, and we would go and cover that. They have the perfect way in controlling their costs on that issue by just not calling us.”

Brian Jopek may be reached at [email protected].