photo by: Journal-World

The west side of the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St.

At the Douglas County Commission’s first day of budget hearings on Tuesday, fire and medical officials asked for nearly $1 million in extra funding, some of which is intended to help relieve some of the pressure as calls for emergency services continue to rise.

Tuesday’s session was the first of three days of hearings scheduled for this week, and it’s just the beginning of the County Commission’s process for approving the county’s 2023 budget. A proposed version of the budget was made public by county staff last week, and commissioners will work for the next week to decide what should change between the proposed version and the final budget they’ll ultimately approve in August.

Part of that process is hearing so-called “supplemental” requests from agencies that want more funding than what the county proposed, and one of the first of those requests the commissioners discussed was from Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical. The department is asking for nearly $1 million in extra funding, which would allow it to hire nine paramedics to staff a new ambulance unit and add two staff members and a vehicle for a “mobile integrated health program,” among various other line-item medical hires and vehicles.

Interim Chief Tom Fagan said these items were necessary because the agency has seen a 24% increase in call volume over the last two years, which has had a “significant impact” on the department’s response times and outcomes.

“The rate at which our calls are increasing is just not sustainable to continue to throw emergency assets at it,” Fagan said. “Although those are needed, we also need to get something out front there that is going to temper that rate of calls.”

Fagan said that in the long term, the department wants to add two new stations. But that goal would take multiple budget cycles to complete, and there weren’t many details about it at the hearing on Tuesday, including where the new stations might be located. But Fagan said there were other things the department could do in the short term to better handle the greater volume of calls.

One of those things is a “mobile integrated health program” that would take some pressure off of fire and medical personnel by identifying patients whose needs could be better met by other agencies in the community and steering them toward those resources. The department proposed adding two new staff members and a vehicle for that program at a cost of $191,700.

But Commissioner Patrick Kelly wondered whether the department could find a way to collaborate with other agencies that didn’t require a funding increase.

“I think we have to look at ways that we can partner together to provide better service that isn’t just extending more and adding more and adding more,” Kelly said.

Another of the department’s priorities directly ties into its goal of adding new stations: buying an ambulance that would eventually be based at a new station. Fagan told the commission that even without new stations, the department would be able to deploy the ambulance immediately, which would help address the high volume of calls.

The $450,000 ambulance isn’t part of the nearly $1 million in extra funding that the fire and medical department is requesting; it was already included in the county’s proposed budget even before the department made its supplemental requests. However, the department is asking for supplemental money to hire nine full-time paramedics to staff that ambulance. The county and the City of Lawrence would split the cost of hiring the paramedics — it would cost the county $340,751 for the 2023 budget year.

The way the city and county divide their funding obligations for Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical could play a role in shaping the budget this year. Last year, the two governments approved a new agreement on how to fund fire and medical services. However, under that agreement, there are certain kinds of budget line items that can change the breakdown of funding between the city and the county. That category includes the items related to the proposal to add new stations — the ambulance and the county’s share of the paramedic costs. If those things were not funded, the county would be responsible for 36% of the department’s budget; if they were, the county would be responsible for 39%.

Commissioner Shannon Reid worried that that ratio might continue to tick up, leading to a greater financial obligation for the county in the future. Fagan, however, said that wasn’t necessarily the case. He said that the percentages would likely fluctuate up and down from year to year, especially if the department works toward adding new stations.

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The commission also spent some time discussing supplemental funding requests from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. The office wants to hire more employees to improve staffing at the Douglas County Jail and to better patrol the county’s roads. It wants to add four deputies, at a cost of $316,415, and six corrections officers, at a cost of $353,455.

Sheriff Jay Armbrister told the commission that although the population at the jail has decreased over time, there’s been an increase in incidents where fights have broken out at the jail or officers have needed assistance with an inmate. Armbrister offered some statistics that showed that “officer needs assistance” calls and fights more than doubled from just over 50 cases in 2020 to 130 in 2021.

“We have kind of hit a space where the needs of our inmate population have outgrown our abilities as this number of staff,” Armbrister said. “It’s borne out through the numbers of officer needs assistance (calls), but really it’s borne out through the number of seriously mentally ill people that are in custody, and they’re in there for so long. We just simply can’t keep up with that kind of treatment for this number of people.”

Meanwhile, Armbrister said the office has also been affected by a decrease in Kansas Highway Patrol presence. He said that at one time, there might have been six or seven troopers assigned to Douglas County, but there’s just one today, and that trooper also has duties in other counties. That leads to a greater need for Douglas County deputies to respond to vehicle accident calls along the major highways running through the county, Armbrister said.

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Much like the work sessions that sometimes take place before the commission’s weekly meeting, no action is taken during budget hearings. Those hearings will continue from 9 a.m. to noon on Wednesday and Thursday. Then, commissioners will decide whether to start their deliberations on Friday or Monday, July 11. Either way, those meetings will also take place from 9 a.m. to noon each day and will end after a final session Tuesday, July 12. The public can attend all of these sessions in person or via Zoom. The final hearing to adopt the 2023 budget is tentatively set for Wednesday, Aug. 24, according to county staff.

The proposed budget is available for the public to view online at dgcoks.org/budget, and meeting information regarding the commission’s hearings and deliberations, including recordings of those sessions, is available on the county’s website at dgcoks.org/commissionmeetings.