photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

A Lawrence Douglas County Fire Medical ambulance is pictured in July 2023.

The formula that Lawrence and Douglas County use to split their fire and EMS expenses could get a major update soon – one that the department says will make the split more stable as staffing grows and changes.

But, in the near term, don’t expect it to yield a much different split than this year.

Last year, the City of Lawrence and Douglas County agreed to split the costs of Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical roughly 60-40 as a stopgap for 2026 as they came up with a new formula. And, at their meetings next week, the city and county commissions will be briefed on the proposed new formula that would result in a split of 59.7% city, 40.3% county.

While that’s not a big difference from the stopgap, it is a bigger difference from the previous agreement that was in effect through 2025. That one had the city paying 64% and the county paying 36%.

The reason for the difference is that the old formula only took into account how many positions were fire vs. how many were EMS. The city’s share was determined by the former, the county’s by the latter.

Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical was formed through the merger of the Lawrence Fire Department and Douglas County Ambulance Service in 1996, and it provides fire services in the city of Lawrence and ambulance services throughout the entire county.

According to a memo from LDCFM to the commissions, the new formula would take many more factors into account than just the staffing split – population stats, the locations of incidents the department responds to, the total number of runs that fire units vs. EMS units go on. It would also involve an estimate of how much demand the Lawrence Fire Department and Douglas County Ambulance Service would each see today if they hadn’t merged in 1996.

During the city and county budget conversations last year, it was discovered that keeping the formula based solely on staffing would result in cost swings if the department added more fire positions than EMS positions, or vice versa.

Before 2026, the memo reads, the department had “25 fire riding positions and 14 EMS riding positions, or 64% / 36%. This percentage had been stable for many years, with no changes to minimum daily staffing.”

But this year, the staffing balance changed to 22 fire positions and 16 EMS positions, which under the previous formula would have been a 58% city, 42% county split. That would mean about $2 million in expenses would have shifted from the city to the county, the memo said.

It also said that every percentage point the ratio changed by would have meant a change of about $300,000 from one government to the other, and that “each position added or removed changes the Shared Expense ratio by more than 1%, since there are far fewer than 100 riding positions staffed every day.”

The goal of the new formula would be to minimize the impact of staffing changes in the future, the memo reads, and that could be important as LDCFM prepares to expand with a new fire station, Station 6. Department leaders previously said that the station would require adding three battalion chiefs, a training lieutenant and 23 full-time equivalent positions to staff a medic unit and a fire engine.

The commissions will both have the chance to discuss the idea at their meetings next week. The City Commission meets on Tuesday, May 4, and the County Commission meets on Wednesday, May 5.

In other business, the City Commission will:

• Receive an update on the preliminary 2027 budget and give staff feedback on it. No further information about this update was attached to the commission’s meeting agenda as of Friday morning.

• Consider purchasing two ambulances at a total cost of $1,148,900. Douglas County will reimburse the city for this purchase, according to the meeting’s agenda materials.

• Consider establishing a temporary moratorium on demolition permits in part of the University Place neighborhood. The moratorium would be intended to give the neighborhood time to submit a National Register of Historic Places nomination to the State Historic Preservation Office.

• Continue its evaluation of city manager candidates. This discussion will take place in executive session, which will start at 4 p.m. Tuesday.