Muskingum Township Still At Odds
Muskingum Township residents packed the Muskingum Township Fire Department tonight, waiting for an explanation.
Tonight’s township meeting focused on a letter sent by the township trustees to the fire department disallowing ems services and requiring an EMS medic vehicle be removed from the property. Community Ambulance has been supplementing the EMS runs and some residents are not happy about it.
“We’re backed up by Community Ambulance, however there is quite a significant downtime that you face waiting on that,” said township resident Susan Wickham. “We have faced that in our own home. We don’t understand why when we have a levy that was passed, and the money is there, why there is such a big to do about it.”
Wickham says she wants answers.
“We just don’t understand why this isn’t going forward,” said Wickham. “Why, when we have elected trustees, that we put in that position, that they are fighting with our volunteer firefighters.”
The board says they need more information before proceeding.
“We need to start putting some numbers together,” said chairman of the board Jerry Miller. “Right now we’re comfortable as a board with the service we’re getting from Community Ambulance at no cost to the tax payer. We’re comfortable with their response time and they are willing to look at options to improve their response time.
Chief John Benson with the Muskingum Township Fire Department says the station is ready to move forward to implement an EMS squad and saw buying the EMS medic as an opportunity to do so.
“We made the decision to buy it because we see the future,” said Fire Chief John Benson. “You have to have a plan. the future is going progressively EMS and we have to get ready for that plan.”
Benson says whether or not they acquire the ems squad, they will still respond when called.
“We’re here for the residents whether they agree with us or not, that makes no difference,” said Benson. “We don’t respond based on skin, income or democrat or republican. You call we come.”
After strong words from all sides, the trustees made a resolution to reinstate basic EMT services with the first responder unit already in house. The trustees will set up a meeting with the fire chief in the near future to discuss the progression of an EMS squad for the township.
“We’re hoping that we can get together with the chief and assistant chief, set up a meeting and talk about some of the issues we have, try to work together to move forward for the protection of the community to provide adequate fire protection,” said Miller.
