Alright.

Welcome to the special meeting of the Vandenberg County Board of Commissioners for May 26th.

Madeline, please call the order.

Commissioner Gable.

Commissioner Canterbury.

Here.

President and Orders.

Here.

Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God.

Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

All right.

On the agenda today, we are uh the commissioners are seeking proposals for uh a county emergency medical service for 2027.

Uh we do have three proposals, uh, one being from American Medical Response AMR.

Number two, uh Emersonville Fire Department, and uh the third proposal is from the Vanderburgh County Fire Department.

Uh we would like to go in that order.

Uh, but here this morning um we will bump the Evansville Fire Department to uh the third presentation.

Uh the superintendent is uh currently in a meeting, so we Chief Knight.

Sorry, Chief Knight will is in a in a meeting currently, so we'll bide some time for him, and then if uh if he's present, uh great.

If not, he does have uh two uh uh individuals from the fire department that can fill in and present the present that information.

Uh a couple items before we begin.

Um, you know, currently right now American Medical Response AMR has uh the contract uh for uh the county and also the city limits.

Um the city has elected to start their own EMS service, and that is going to start uh July 1st.

The uh map here, and I did print out a few back there just for reference.

Uh currently uh the Vanderburgh County uh fire department has uh or does cover areas in the townships of Almstrong, Scott, German, and the town of Darmstadt, and um the areas or the townships that uh need service going forward, uh, are Perry Union and parts of center township.

So we are going to allow for those presentations, and we're gonna give each group uh roughly 10 minutes or so.

Uh there could be some back and forth or questions from the commissioners, and then at the end I want to give the opportunity as we stated in our public announcement to the media to our residents.

Is that give them an opportunity to come up and voice any concerns or if they have any questions, they will have that opportunity at the end.

Um with each proposal, obviously some very important things that we're looking at.

Obviously, number one is service, uh location of where this is going to occur, the location of the ambulances cost, and what kind of contract are we looking at?

So those were the big four things that I'm gonna be looking at going into this uh proposal, and then um finally at the end, um, when we conclude our meeting, we will have uh further negotiations.

Uh obviously, this is a uh there's a funding piece to this, so we'll be uh obviously talking to our friends on county council as well, and then um we'll likely see another important meeting for the commissioners to hash out all these negotiations and details, and then the final decision uh will be made by the commissioners at June at the June 16th meeting, which is our first meeting in June.

So just wanted to kind of lay that groundwork uh before we begin.

Commissioners, is there anything else that I did not mention?

You get good to go.

I'm good to go.

I just want to preface this meeting by stating to all parties how impressed we are with your presentations and the information you've given us and the um arguments you've given us, and I know it's coming out now in the public, but it's helped the commissioners to to this date.

Of course, we're not there yet, so thank you.

And I would just add I think it's important for uh the community to understand that we're not just looking at this today at the beginning.

We've been talking about this as well since um the city made decisions to to make the change, but I just wanted to make sure that the work has not just is not beginning today, it's been going on for for several several months and and having these discussions and and talking through what this looks like and uh knowing that we had through the end of the year to have the current contract fulfilled.

Okay.

Thank you, Commissioners.

Uh let's go ahead and begin first on the uh list is American Medical Response AMR, you may come forward.

He's getting around.

Before you begin, I do want to make note.

I think it's important we do have two county council members in here.

Uh County Council member Han and Acarino.

Appreciate you guys being here.

Guys, maybe in.

Excellent.

So I'm Paul Phillips.

I am the regional director for AMR of Evansville, and with me I have Lee Turpin, who is the operations manager for AMR of Evansville.

And first off, I just wanted to say thank you all for the opportunity to present our proposal to you all, and uh just to kind of lay out our case for the quality that we present, and then also just the coverage that we're going to provide.

Um I guess there we go.

Those pictures always look a whole lot better than they do in person.

Sorry about that.

So we wanted to kind of lay out our history of service here to Vandenberg County, and uh, you know, some of that I'm not gonna read the entire timeline to you because you know that would that would be a while.

But we've been in service here with our predecessor organizations for a little over 105 years, and that's a proud history we have with the county, and we're we're really happy that we've been able to continuously serve the county through that time.

Um wanted to point out a couple of things.