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Webster County advisory council asks Otho for more data before awarding $75,000 in EMS tax revenue
Summary
Advisory council members and local responders debated whether $75,000 from newly approved EMS essential-service tax should be allocated to Otho Fire & Rescue’s newly started transport service. Otho presented response and staffing data; the council requested January-to-present call records and an adjusted Fort Dodge Fire budget before deciding.
The Webster County EMS Advisory Council on Oct. 8 paused a decision on whether to direct $75,000 in new EMS essential-service tax revenue to Otho Fire & Rescue, instead asking Otho to provide detailed operational data dating back to when it began transporting patients.
Marty Smith, fire chief in Otho, told the council that his department had sought inclusion in the county’s transport-funding plan and that Otho had been providing transport since early this year. "We felt like the redheaded stepchild," Smith said, describing repeated outreach and requests for consideration. He added that Otho has spent local funds to purchase ambulances and cited community support for the service.
The committee heard a data presentation from Dylan Hagen, assistant fire chief and service director for Otho Fire. Hagen said his ImageTrend reporting shows an average dispatch-to-enroute time of "3.71 minutes" and an average enroute-to-on-scene time just over 6.5 minutes; he reported that Otho covered 89% of calls in the May 1–Oct. 1 reporting window and that 37 of 64 dispatch-reported calls in that period were EMS-related. Hagen said ImageTrend contained 92 patient reports for the same span, with 30 patients transported by Otho. He warned the council that dispatch exports and agency-entered patient reports differ and that some fields (for example, non-transport/refusal) are not consistently completed.
Several council members and service directors urged caution. They said the advisory group needed evidence that Otho’s transport service is sustainable before committing taxpayer dollars to it. One supervisor summarized the impasse: "I think this all comes down to, you know, dollars — $75,000," and called for clearer numbers to assess impact and sustainability.
Speakers representing longer-established providers argued the county must weigh trade-offs. Some said directing funding to an established ALS-capable provider could increase countywide paramedic coverage, while Otho and its supporters said losing funding would reduce local ambulance capacity and could diminish coverage for parts of the county.
The council did not vote on a funding allocation. Instead it asked Otho to provide full operational numbers going back to the start of its transport service (the council agreed Feb. 1 or Jan. 1 data would be useful) and asked Fort Dodge Fire to submit an adjusted budget that shows how removing $75,000 would affect its capacity. The advisory council scheduled a follow-up meeting in about two weeks to review those materials and continue the discussion.
The outcome leaves final funding decisions pending; the council said it will reconvene after receiving the requested data and budget scenarios.
