The new Eudora ambulance is on track to be in service early next year, Eudora Fire Chief Ken Keiter said.

“We’re still on track for a Feb. 1 move in,” he said. “It’s going to be great having a paramedic station in Eudora, not only providing the city but the eastern part of Douglas County with a higher level of service.”

Lawrence Douglas County Fire Medical Chief Mark Bradford confirmed the goal was to start the service Feb. 1. It should be realized unless some unforeseen glitch developed, he said.

The Douglas County Commission agreed in July to fund as part of the 2017 budget the expansion of Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical to Eudora. After county commissioners had denied service expansion requests in 2014 and 2015, Eudora city officials got Eudora township officials to join them last summer in the bid to fund the ambulance service expansion.

It worked, as the county’s 2017 budget includes $335,148 to purchase a new ambulance and equipment and $937,300 for annual operational costs.

Bradford said Eudora service would be equipped with the department’s reserve ambulances until the new unit arrived in mid-summer.

The department promoted part-time employees to full time to fill the four paramedic and four emergency medical technician positions needed to man another ambulance station, Bradford said. The department’s policy is to fill full-time openings by promoting part-time EMTs and paramedics, he said.

The Eudora ambulance service is to be stationed in the city’s Public Safety Building at 10th and Main streets, which opened in 2013. In 2014 and 2015, the city of Eudora gave the county the option of stationing the Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical ambulance at its old public safety building at 840 Main St.

The Eudora Public Works Department is now using the old public safety building for storage, Eudora Mayor Tim Reazin said. The Eudora City Commission has discussed disposing of the building for a commercial reuse with the hope it could expand the city’s tax base, he said.

The Douglas County Appraiser’s Office assessed the value of the building and its property at $293,290. Money the city received for the building could be used to add more storage facilities in the city’s public works yard, Reazin said.

Reazin said, however, the Eudora City Commission and city staff was focused currently on the Nottingham property, which it is currently working with the Kansas City, Mo., developer CBC Real Estate Group to redevelop. Any transaction involving the old public safety building would probably have to wait until more progress was made on that initiative, he said.