Ohio village relies on volunteers, mutual aid after EMS layoffs

By Christopher Gillett
Star Beacon

NORTH KINGSVILLE, Ohio — The village has been relying on volunteer firefighter and rescue services since it laid off its part-time Emergency Medical Services staff in July.

The move was controversial because residents expected it to slow down emergency response, and people were laid off.

North Kingsville Mayor Terrance McConnell said costs were a problem with having part-time staff.

"[The village] did not have the money coming in to cover the expenditures just on the pay,” he said. “It should’ve never hit [2023], because they kept going down. [North Kingsville EMS] started with $100,000. They went down to $80,000. In [2024] we ended up at $17,000. Couldn’t even make payroll for the rest of the thing.”

McConnell said the village’s part-time employees worked when needed before.

“The way it worked before was you had two people here and they could make a call,” he said. “The way I understand is, other people might be able to assist with them if they needed it.”

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McConnell said the village is also relying on mutual aid from neighboring communities when volunteers are not sufficient.

“If we get called for a problem, rescue squad ... North Kingsville can’t respond, so what they do is, it gets turned out to Kingsville, Plymouth, Ashtabula, Conneaut,” he said. “We all have mutual aid. If we can’t do it, another entity will do it.”

McConnell said while a levy to pay for EMS passed, it won’t go into effect until 2025, and it’s harder to get volunteers for the fire department in the meantime.

“We will meet and try to restart this thing,” he said. “We haven’t had a meeting yet — me being new now I had a lot of things on the plate. We’re going to schedule a meeting, hopefully within the next week.”

McConnell said he wants to present some figures relating to EMS in North Kingsville.

“We’ll have to work with the figures we got and what can come and what we can project for if it was fully manned or the runs that they would make,” he said. “The money we would get front he runs. because you only get paid for the transports.”

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