Archer Council Ambulance Meeting: Many Ideas, No Decisions

Archer, Iowa — Representatives from each O’Brien County town, EMS service, the Board of Supervisors, and others came together Thursday night for a special meeting of the Archer City Council that was designed to try and get some ideas into how ambulance service for Archer and the surrounding area will work once the Archer Ambulance Service officially disbands at the end of next month.

EMS coverage for calls in the Archer Ambulance District have been split between the Sheldon Community Ambulance Team, Sanborn Ambulance and Primghar Ambulance Team since last June when the Archer service lost three of it’s volunteers, making it impossible for them to take ambulance calls. After attempts to recruit new members to staff the Archer Ambulance proved unsuccessful, the Archer City Council voted in November to disband their ambulance service permanently.

Since June, Sheldon, Sanborn and Primghar have been answering calls in the Archer Ambulance District as part of a contingency plan that was put together at the county level several years ago. Thursday night’s meeting was designed to bring all of the separate entities together and see what kind of a permanent plan could be put together.

While considerable discussion and sharing of ideas took place among the 40 or so people who attended, no decisions were made during Thursday night’s meeting. After the meeting, O’Brien County EMA Coordinator Jared Johnson told KIWA he thought the meeting went quite well.

During the meeting Sheldon City Manager Sam Kooiker told the group that the Sheldon Council would hold a budget workshop on January 16th, and he invited the representatives to attend that meeting. Johnson says he has no idea how many of those who attended Thursday’s meeting would accept Kooiker’s invitation, he says he does plan to attend.

Many of the ideas put forth at the meeting involved redrawing the boundaries used to split up the Archer District three ways to be covered by the three neighboring EMS teams. But Johnson says he’s encouraged by the fact that, while there were many different ideas, everybody in the room had the same goal.

Currently the Archer City Council is accepting sealed bids for their now unused ambulance. Attorney Micah Schreurs. who attended the meeting, told the group that a sealed bid process was somewhat unfair to other municipalities, since any bid another town would want to place would have to be voted on in open session, putting the municipalities at a disadvantage.

After about two hours of discussion and ideas, the meeting adjourned with Johnson urging the EMS officials in the room to take the ideas generated to their individual city councils, and discuss the situation with them.

The current Contingency Plan coverage map can be viewed below…………………..

 

O’Brien County EMA Coordinator Jared Johnson Explains EMS Coverage Of The Archer District

Archer City Council

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