Lawrence–Douglas County fire-medical outlines 2026 budget options that would cut staff and shift costs between city and county

Acting Fire Chief Joe Hardy told Douglas County commissioners at a work session that Lawrence'Douglas County Fire Medical (LDCFM) must reconcile rising emergency call volume with a city request to reduce its contribution by roughly $1.5 million to $1.9 million for the 2026 budget.

The presentation summarized how LDCFM assigns resources to specific call types, showed recent case studies in which the system reached "status 0" (no ambulances or fire apparatus available) and outlined four budget options that trade staff, service levels and the shared-cost percentage between the city of Lawrence and Douglas County.

Why it matters: LDCFM said call volume has grown substantially over recent years, pushing travel times and resource exhaustion higher in several demand zones. Several of the budget scenarios presented would reduce staffed apparatus or supervisory positions and eliminate multiple full-time-equivalent (FTE) positions, changes LDCFM's leadership warned would make it harder to meet critical tasks on high-acuity calls.

Hardy said the department dispatches units based on "call type" and the critical tasks associated with that call; those tasks do not change even if fewer personnel or different apparatus respond. "Our response times are getting longer, much longer in some areas," Hardy said, citing multi-minute travel-time increases in several county demand zones.

The presentation included three on-the-record case studies from earlier in 2025 in which routine daytime and overnight demand rapidly consumed available ambulances and apparatus. In one January example, a structure fire plus multiple medical calls left the system temporarily without any available fire trucks or ambulances; LDCFM said only a prevention lieutenant in a staff vehicle happened to be on scene and stopped additional property damage. The department described similar episodes in…