By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Levy County officials confirmed Tuesday they have closed the ambulance station in Fanning Springs until the Emergency Medical Service can hire additional paramedics.
Closing the Fanning Springs station leaves the county with six ambulances instead of seven at a time when call loads are rising.
EMS had been moving employees from other parts of the county to temporarily fill shifts at the Fanning Springs station. The station is now closed until enough employees can be hired to operate the ambulance.
County Coordinator Wilbur Dean said the shortage of employees does affect response time, “but it’s just been an uncontrolled set of circumstances.”
“Until we get some additional employees hired it will remain closed, but as soon as we get our staffing levels back it will be reopened,” Dean said.
He said the biggest problem is that Citrus County has begun to operate a publicly funded EMS department and is hiring employees at wage rates much higher than Levy County. Citrus had previously contracted with a private EMS company.
“All that happened when we had finalized our budget and everything else. It’s kind of making it a little bit complicated,” Dean said. “I am waiting for some information to come back from our labor attorney on some different articles in the contract.”
Levy County EMS paramedics and EMTs as well as county firefighters are represented by the International Association of Firefighters Local 4069. It is a public union that can’t strike but can negotiate wages and working conditions.
The county is in the final year of the IAFF contract. Normally the county would negotiate wages and hopefully reach an agreement before the contract ended. Dean said the county could legally raise wages for EMS employees right now if the union would agree to the county’s offer, but he said it’s not that simple for Levy County Commissioners.
“At some point, we have to figure out where the money is coming from. It’s an assessment-based program. You have to weigh in on that. The commissioners have a tough decision,” Dean said.
County taxpayers currently pay an EMS property assessment of $154, a fire assessment of $129 and a landfill assessment of $116, and well as a 9-mill property tax millage rate.
One local resident told Spotlight she was being “taxed out of her home.” She already pays more than $1,650 annually in property taxes and property assessments.
The county requires its paramedics and EMTs to work large amounts of overtime. EMS employees are some of the highest-paid employees in county government but they work a tremendous amount of overtime to reach that pay level. They say extended hours plays havoc with family life and their health.
It has been suggested that the county raise the base wages of EMTs and paramedics by converting some of the overtime pay into higher hourly wages that would make Levy County EMS more attractive to future employees and reduce the number of hours ambulance crews must work.
Dean said he is waiting for information from the county’s labor attorney regarding certain articles in the IAFF contract.
Ryan Tietjen, IAFF Local 4069 president, said EMS employees are concerned about the loss of the seventh ambulance.
“We’re concerned. We’re already starting to get thin on units. We have a higher call load and they‘re shutting down a truck. Also surrounding counties, their pay is substantially higher than ours, so that’s where everybody is going. They’re not going to come to Levy County when they can make twice as much there.” He was referring mainly to Citrus County.
Tietjen said he has talked to Levy County Public Safety Director Mitch Harrell about the employee shortage and the amount of overtime ambulance employees are being asked to work.
“There’s just not enough people to keep that truck in Fanning Springs open. They’ve moved the people at that station to other spots around to the county to fill other trucks,” Tietjen said. “It is getting crazy. I’m really hoping the county will make things work. They sent a wage article to their labor attorney a week ago and we haven’t heard back.”
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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt November 2, 2021; Posted November 2, 2021
