County presenters warn Dunn County EMS and volunteer fire services face funding, staffing shortfalls

Officials and local volunteers told the Dunn County Judiciary and Law Committee that emergency medical services (EMS) and volunteer fire departments across the county face rising costs, falling volunteer numbers and growing difficulty meeting 24/7 service requirements.

The presentation was opened by Garrett Zasteful, Community and Leadership Development Educator with the University of Wisconsin Extension, who told the committee that Wisconsin has about 360 ambulance providers and roughly 800 fire departments and that statewide EMS responds to more than 1 million calls annually — an average of roughly 2,700 calls a day. "We're seeing a lot of services are not reliable, nor are they sustainable," Zasteful said.

Zasteful and Tony Christopherson, town chairman for the Town of Elk Mound, described multiple contributors to the stress on rural services: an aging population that increases call volume, higher training requirements and operating costs that outpace reimbursements, and competition for staff from hospitals and urban employers. Zasteful said the Northwest region of the state has a "64% reliability deficit" for 24/7 ambulance coverage; statewide the figure is about 41 percent, figures he cited from a 2023 report.

Why this matters: committee members were given specifics about capital and operating pressures that counties and towns face when relying on volunteer or mixed volunteer-career systems. Zasteful noted a new ambulance can cost about $250,000 and a rural fire pumper about $850,000; a powered patient cot can cost around $20,000. He said paramedics statewide average about $29 per hour.

Christopherson described his town's fiscal experience and the local consequences of those statewide pressures. He said the Town of Elk Mound is a recent recipient of a $50,000 Wisconsin Innovation Planning Grant to study fire and EMS planning. On municipal costs, he said a multi-year rise in per-capita contributions to Colfax EMS had moved from about $10,000 (reference year given as 2006) to roughly $78,000 paid by the town in 2024 and an anticipated $90,000 in 2025 for the town's share. He described limited municipal budget flexibility under Wisconsin's levy limits and said only certain fees for fire protection can currently be assessed by townships outside the levy limit, while counties — not municipalities — have a statutory carve-out for ambulance funding.

Presenters outlined several models counties and towns are considering: 1) do nothing and accept the status quo; 2) a county-run ambulance service (used by a small number of very rural counties); 3) a county contracting model that awards service contracts to one or more providers; and 4) expanded use of community paramedics who provide appointments and preventive visits to reduce 911 call volume and serve as flexible responders when crews are short. "There are pros and cons to each model," Zasteful said, noting that some counties in Wisconsin are already exploring contracting or county-operated models.

Several committee members and municipal officials raised operational concerns: response time variability in rural areas, the strain of multi-agency mutual aid at large fires (including water-hauling needs for rural fires), and the difficulty of recruiting volunteers given low on-call pay in prior years. Christopherson described a recent multi-department response that required hauling hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to a rural fire scene, illustrating how equipment or infrastructure limits can multiply costs.

Next steps and direction: the presenters said the town of Elk Mound and partners will use the $50,000 planning grant to hire consultants for a countywide study. They reported that two cost estimates were discussed for consulting work: roughly $35,000 to study EMS countywide and about $52,000 to add countywide fire study work; the towns and host organizations have decided to pursue the study. Zasteful and Christopherson asked committee members to be aware of the discussions and said they would share study results and options with county officials.

Ending: Committee members thanked the presenters and discussed follow-up questions. Multiple speakers emphasized the social and mental-health strain on volunteers and telecommunicators caused by repeated high-stress incidents. The presentation closed with a call to plan now rather than wait for more service failures.