Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
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Martinsville, Virginia 24115
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| Supervisors to hear panel's ideas |
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Monday, August 24, 2009
By DEBBIE HALL - Bulletin Staff Writer
The chairman of an EMS Task Force created last year resigned about a week before the group’s recommendations are to be presented to the Henry County Board of Supervisors.
The board is expected to consider the recommendations at its 6 p.m. meeting Tuesday in the Henry County Administration Building. Joshua Tucker said Saturday he plans to attend the meeting.
Tucker proposed creating the task force to the Henry County and Martinsville Rescue Squad Association last year and served as its chairman until Aug. 17. He is captain of the Horsepasture Volunteer Rescue Squad and vice president of the rescue squad association.
In a recent letter stating his intent to resign, Tucker said he had high hopes for the task force when it began last year, after county officials expressed concerns about some squads’ lack of communication, response times, documentation of patient care and other issues.
The task force was intended to “increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the EMS system to ensure all residents are served equally and adequately,” Tucker added Saturday.
Tucker wrote that he envisioned that the group would be made up of “open-minded individuals with a similar vision” and with equal representation from the community and rescue squads.
Ideally, its members would lay “personal agendas aside” and work together “and develop the most efficient and effective system ... This is what the association approved and put into action,” Tucker wrote.
“Regretfully, I have come to learn” the support necessary to creating that vision was not forthcoming, he wrote.
“First, a member of the board of supervisors refused to assign” a representative from that supervisor’s district, Tucker wrote.
He explained that when the task force was created, it was to equally represent both squads and residents “with no affiliation whatsoever” with the EMS system. To accomplish that, Tucker said the supervisors from three districts, picked randomly, were asked to appoint a task force member from their rescue squad, and the other three supervisors were asked to appoint a district resident.
Reed Creek, Ridgeway and Bassett were selected to appoint squad members, while Horsepasture, Iriswood and Collinsville supervisors were asked to appoint residents, Tucker said Saturday.
However, a squad member, not a resident, was appointed from Collinsville, he added.
Also, members serving on the task force “refused to be open-minded to new ideas,” he wrote. Representatives of the EMS community often are “focused on what they feel is best for their agency and refuse to look at the betterment” of the system as a whole.
He has heard the Henry County Office of Public Safety “was anti-volunteer,” Tucker wrote, but while serving on the task force, he has found that the opposite is true.
Public safety officials have “an enormous amount of experience in EMS” and are respected “throughout the region and state for their expertise,” Tucker wrote. “Henry County volunteers would be wise to take advantage of” that resource, he added.
Although he hopes the system will improve and remains willing to help, “it saddens me to think the last year has shown zero progress, making me wonder how many lives have been put at risk while we keep doing the same thing,” Tucker wrote.
Supervisors also are set to consider a number of recommendations from the task force, but Tucker said he cannot support any “in whole or in part.”
When the recommendations were presented to the Rescue Squad Association and questions were asked, Tucker said he felt the answers often were “misleading.” He did not elaborate.
One of the task force recommendations is that the supervisors coordinate efforts and appoint representatives to a new commission to oversee the county’s EMS system. Each volunteer rescue squad also would appoint a representative.
The commission would have authority in 11 areas, including coordinating emergency medical services with volunteer and other agencies; assigning, reviewing and updating response territories to ensure all residents are provided services by volunteer squads; and reviewing squad performance to maintain a consistent performance level.
In other matters at the meeting Tuesday, supervisors will:
• Hold a public hearing required before conveying 34 percent ownership of the Athena Building to the city of Martinsville for 34 percent ($561,000) of the purchase price. The building will house Henry-Martinsville Social Services.
• Hold a public hearing on Sheriff Lane Perry’s request to apply for a $30,716 JAG Grant through the Department of Justice Recovery Act. The grant will be used to help fund Neighborhood Watch and Citizen Police Academies Crime Prevention programs. A local match is not required.
• Continue the meeting until a joint county/city meeting at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 31. That meeting will begin with a dedication of the newest shell building and then convene in the county administration building’s fourth-floor conference room to consider reports on the Piedmont Area Regional Transit system and the move of the social services department. |
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