MOUNT VERNON — Mount Vernon City Council members renewed the city’s $500,000 contract with College Township and Kenyon College for fire and EMS coverage at their Monday meeting.
“They’re happy with our service, and we’re happy with them. It’s two-way, so we’re very happy to be partners,” Mount Vernon Fire Chief Chad Christopher said.
“We did meet with Kenyon College also to make sure they’re happy with our service. They’re very happy with our service as well.”
Christopher said the call volume for the station has remained steady over the past five years. The volume fluctuates based on whether Kenyon is in session.
“College Township is our third medic in the city. So if we’ve seen any increase, we’ve seen it because of our own call volume within our city, not necessarily the township,” the chief said.
In addition to the $500,000, the city receives the EMS billing. The revenue covers the city’s costs for providing services to the township and college.
“They certainly pay for their service, and it’s mutually beneficial,” Safety-Service Director Tanner Salyers said.
“It helps the city with our costs that are associated with running a fire and EMS service, and College Township and Kenyon College have a premier fire service.”
Tweaking the contract
Christopher said the renewal contract is essentially the same as the original except for a few areas.
Under the initial contract, College Township provided its equipment for the city’s use but retained ownership.
“They’ve turned all their emergency vehicles and assets over, so that needed to come out of the contract,” Christopher said.
Another change relates to personnel. The agreement called for one lieutenant, one firefighter/paramedic, and one part-time firefighter/EMT.
“We changed that to one sworn officer, because it could be a captain or a lieutenant, and then one firefighter or two more firefighter paramedics, whether that’s full-time, or part-time,” Christopher said.
“We didn’t want to just handcuff ourselves and say, ‘you’re a part-timer.’”
The most significant change is added language in case property taxes become unconstitutional and the township has no funds.
Salyers said if that happens, the city will sit down with all parties and enter into good-faith negotiations on how to move forward.
“Which would be something that would happen across the entire state of Ohio at that point in time. Everybody would be renegotiating contracts like this and trying to figure out how to provide essential services,” he said.
“It was our mutual goal — I think I can comfortably speak for the township and for Kenyon College — that we would like to see this contract continue. But we would have to reexamine how that would happen when their means of revenue would have dried up.”
However, if the property tax structure is merely changed or reduced, the contract remains intact.
Suspending the rules ‘moves the legislation along’
The current five-year contract expires May 31. Council members waived the third reading and approved the contract so that the township trustees could approve it at their May 13 meeting.
Councilman Taylor Jacklin questioned whether the administration could have brought the contract to council earlier to avoid suspending the rules.
Salyers and Christopher agreed they could have. However, they also noted that it was essentially the same contract.
“If anything would have been upsetting us, I’m sure that we would have [gotten it out earlier],” Christopher said.
Salyers agreed, noting if the contract had substantive changes, the administration would have presented it earlier for discussion and more rigorous debate as it has in the past.
“But where this is just literally changing some dates and adding an amendment based on something that’s wildly out of our control, really there’s no major substantive change to this,” he said.
Council woman Amber Keener said, “We still have the ability to put this off, but we want to be good partners, and we are working around other governing entities’ schedules.”
“I think that it’s basically the same contract with just a few tweaks here and there. So I think that this is a good-faith kind of effort here.”
Noting that the contract does not take effect until June 1, Councilman Dale Miller said suspending the rules for the third reading moves the legislation along.
“It benefits the township trustees in order that they can adopt it and everything can fall into place so we can meet this June 1 deadline for when the contract actually takes effect,” he said.
