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Richland County to end joint ambulance committee; municipalities must sign contracts by Nov. 1 amid dispute over Pine Valley calls
Summary
The county board voted to end the joint committee and require contracts; committee members debated which municipality should carry calls from Pine Valley Community Village after Richland Center said it would not accept billing responsibility.
The Richland County board has voted to dissolve the joint ambulance committee and to begin offering contracts to municipalities and townships, the county's ambulance committee was told at its recent meeting. Under the county's timetable, municipalities must commit to a contract by Nov. 1 for service in the following year.
"There will not be a joint ambulance committee…The ambulance service will be run as a business, and we will offer contracts to the municipalities townships," Trish (county staff) told the committee, describing modifications the full county board made to a draft memorandum of understanding and asking municipalities to respond by Nov. 1.
The announcement prompted immediate debate over how calls are assigned and billed, focusing on Pine Valley Community Village, a county‑owned long‑term care facility. Committee materials originally attributed Pine Valley calls to the City of Richland Center; the city administrator subsequently told county staff the city would not accept responsibility for billing those calls. Staff then reassigned those calls to the Town of Richland, drawing objections from township officials.
"We went from 57 average to 124," a committee member said when discussing call counts. Several members warned that reassigning Pine Valley calls to a single township would place an outsized cost burden on that township’s taxpayers. Members urged staff and county board representatives to explore distributing Pine Valley's call load across participating municipalities or to identify a different funding model.
Committee members described the new contract approach as a stopgap to stabilize finances and buy time while the county develops longer‑term options such as a district, alternative funding, or a different governance model. Several municipal representatives said they would take the draft contracts to their governing bodies for decisions and asked staff to allow some flexibility in how calls are allocated before the Nov. 1 deadline.
Trish said a draft contract will next go to the county executive and finance committee; if approved there it will be distributed to municipalities within a few days. The committee scheduled a follow‑up meeting for Oct. 20 at 5:00 p.m. so municipal representatives could discuss allocation options before the contract deadline.
The committee did not take a binding vote on Pine Valley assignment at the meeting; members instead asked staff to provide clearer call counts broken down by facility and municipality and to return with contracts and allocation options for consideration.
