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Commissioners weigh EMS whole‑blood program and uniform funding; staff flags offsets
Summary
EMS and county staff presented a $120,000 request to equip four quick‑response vehicles with low‑titer whole blood and a separate roughly $27,000 request to add two shirts per EMS employee; commissioners asked operational and funding questions and suggested offsets rather than a tax-rate increase.
Representatives from the county’s EMS program presented two discrete budget requests to the board: a proposed $120,000 package to place low‑titer O‑negative whole blood on four quick‑response vehicles and a request of roughly $27,000 to provide two additional uniform shirts per EMS employee.
Josh Kylander, introduced to the board as the presenter for EMS, outlined the proposed deployment and estimate: "proposed amount to fund 4 of our quick response vehicles with whole blood, would be that $120,000 amount," and said the county could expect to treat about 32 patients annually under the proposed placement strategy.
Commissioners probed clinical and operational details: how universal low‑titer O‑negative blood would be used, the 28‑day shelf life the EMS team cited, and how dispatch would prioritize limited blood‑equipped vehicles. Staff said Atrium Health’s blood bank would absorb units the college did not use and that the county would pay only for units administered locally.
A separate uniforms request was presented with a $27,002.88 price for two additional shirts per EMS employee; staff offered to explore laundering services and other recurring costs. During budget balancing, one commissioner proposed offsetting the EMS uniform increase by delaying a $150,000 compression study; staff proposed an adjusted swap to fund the blood and uniform requests without increasing the tax rate.
No formal appropriation was adopted during the work session; commissioners asked staff to model specific offsets and include the EMS line items in the ordinance that will be presented for adoption at the next meeting.
