EMS levy passes: City aggregation fails by slim margin
Coshocton County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Director Todd Shroyer and several members of EMS are pictured at the Board of Elections on Tuesday evening, May 8 following the successful approval of the 1 mill levy placed on the county wide May 8 primary ballot.
COSHOCTON – The Coshocton County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) additional 1 mill levy passed with a vote of 2,610 for and 2,421 against in unofficial results and without provisional ballots which are yet to be counted in the Ohio May 8 primary election. EMS Director Todd Shroyer was joined by several staffers at the Coshocton County Board of Elections on Tuesday evening, May 8 and watched anxiously as the results came in. Early absentee voting of 1,017 votes had the levy failing with 495 votes for and 522 against.
Shroyer said, “It was a very close vote. We are very appreciative of the voters giving us the opportunity to raise the taxes. This will allow us to put our fifth crew back and eight people. We have not filled those positions as people have left and now we will be able to do that. We won’t be able to do it immediately because we won’t see this money until this time next year.”
“We will start working toward putting that fifth crew back together. It is important that the voters know that this has nothing to do with the Tribune building. Not one penny of that money can be used on the Tribune building. This is solely for operations and 100% to get crews back.”
“This is going to save someone’s life. There is no other way to say it. With only four crews we can’t backfill and send a crew to Warsaw when that crew goes out. We can’t send a crew to West Lafayette like we had been doing. When you’re that far away from town and have a heart attack there’s no chance. Our average response time is under six minutes and this will hopefully allow us to get it back under six minutes this time next year.”
“That’s pretty much anywhere in the county and unless you live in the remote corners it’s going to take less time and mostly we are at two or three minutes.”
“When your county is 560 square miles and you’re covering that with four crews you just can’t. With five crews we know we can.”
“The biggest thing this means is security. I’ve got some really good people and had the vote gone the other way I think some of them would have been questioning is this where I stay or do I take that job ten minutes further drive that pays twice as much. A lot of my folks could immediately walk away from Coshocton County and make twice as much as here. We don’t want to lose those people.”
“I want to thank my levy committee, Don Carpenter, treasurer, Donna and Kayla Chapman., Kathy Fuller in the office and my wife putting up with me being gone for the past several weeks.”
Coshocton City Mayor Steve Mercer commented on the electric and gas aggregation issues that were on city residents ballot. “There was not a lot of publicity that we put out about it. The aggregation concept is something that we wanted to present to the people as an opportunity to perhaps group together for lower buying rates for themselves. Right now it is obviously so close – we are going to have to wait on the provisional ballots to really determine where we’re at on it. It could go either way. This was a matter of strictly putting it to the people. Do you want to consider this or do you not? If they say ‘yes’, that’s fine, if they say ‘no’, that’s fine.”
Unofficial results had the Coshocton city electric aggregation issue failing by only four votes and the gas aggregation issue failing by 13 votes.
The village of West Lafayette electric aggregation passed in unofficial results with a vote of 151 for and 121 against.
All results are considered unofficial until certified by the Board of Elections.
Click here for more election results.
Category: Government
