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Town votes to purchase EMS vehicles

By Wesley LeBlanc
Posted 2/20/19

ORANGE PARK – The Town of Orange Park is closer than ever to owning and operating its own fire and rescue service.

Orange Park Town Council approved the purchase of two rescue vehicles at its …

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Town votes to purchase EMS vehicles


Posted

ORANGE PARK – The Town of Orange Park is closer than ever to owning and operating its own fire and rescue service.

Orange Park Town Council approved the purchase of two rescue vehicles at its Feb. 19 meeting, bringing it one step closer to EMS autonomy from Clay County. In December last year, the County Board of County Commissioners voted 3-2 to approve Orange Park’s application to run its own rescue unit and have its own Certificate of Need. The next step in this process saw Orange Park write a contract for a medical director. Having done that, the town moved onto the next step which requires it to buy equipment such as backup vehicle units and more.

“At your last meeting, you approved the budget amendment that allocates the funds to purchase these two units and now what we have in front of you is the contract to actually purchase the two rescue units,” Town Manager Sarah Campbell said.

The two units in the contract were both 2019 Ford E-450 Custom AEV Type III units. According to the Orange Park Fire Chief Alvin Barker, he and staff looked at purchasing smaller vehicles with a different chassis but when considering repairs these vehicles might need, it was just barely less expensive than buying new vehicles. For that reason, Barker recommended the purchase of two new rescue vehicles.

“Going to a smaller unit, like a sprinter unit, you can only carry one patient and that’s good if you’re a private ambulance,” Barker said. “It’s likely that we’ll need to transport two patients and with Sprinter units, for example, in a car wreck, we’d be calling additional units each time.”

The council voted 5-0 vote to approve the two 2019 Ford rescue vehicles. Already in the budget, these vehicles will cost $400,000 and should arrive in three to four months.

The next step is getting the VIN numbers of these vehicles so that Orange Park can finally apply for a state license. Because the vehicles won’t be here for a few months, it will be a few months longer until the town can apply for this license.

“Once those VIN numbers have been assigned, I think we have everything we need to apply to the state for our EMS license so those are the next two pieces really,” Campbell said. “We need to secure a billing company to handle bills and we still have some smaller supplies to purchase, some medical supplies to buy and some durable goods we need.”

Campbell estimates that the town will be ready for the state license around June 1 this year.

With these two new vehicles, the town’s EMS will see its vehicle stock rise to eight — Ladder 19, Engine 19, Engine 192, two rescue units, a mobile unit known as a MERV and couple of chief command vehicles.

The town moved to take back control of its own EMS service after years of discussions with the county over costs to run the system. The county said the agreement was equitable, while the town disagreed and then set out to establish its own service.