County anticipates increased workload for WayneNET, plans to hire 30 employees
By Steve Herring
Published in News on September 9, 2016 10:05 AM
Wayne County will spend more than $600,000 to hire up to 30 part-time employees and add vehicles for its Wayne Non-Emergency Transport operation in anticipation of the possible doubling of its transport load due to the closing of Johnston Ambulance Service.
The offset of that expense is that the county can expect to realize an additional $1.66 million in WayneNET revenue over the 10 months remaining in the fiscal year.
Johnston Ambulance Service shuttered its doors at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 31. According to the company's website, the business began operations in 1971 and served 14 counties in eastern and central North Carolina.
It is not the first time that WayneNET has picked up former JAS jobs.
"Just as we had the opportunity when they lost some major customers about four months ago, as you know we expanded WayneNET," County Manager George Wood told Wayne County commissioners during their Tuesday session. "I asked our group to get started on that immediately.
"They (JAS) actually still have a fairly large number of clients here in Wayne County, and we want to expand WayneNET and try to get that business just like we did four months ago. I asked Mel and Nannette to work up the changes that we would need."
Office of Emergency Services Director Mel Powers told commissioners that as soon as the call about the closing had been received that EMS Manager Brian Smith and WayneNET Coordinator Nannette Sutton moved quickly to address the issue.
"We found out on the 30th that JAS was going to shut its doors," Powers said. "That was about all of the notice that we had received. So Nannette and Brian started looking at what the call volume was. What we are anticipating, they were running about 700 to 725 transport calls in Wayne County. We are running close to 700 calls a month.
"So for us to try to handle the influx of calls it is pretty much going to double what we are looking at to about 1,400 calls. With that in mind we are going to have to increase our personnel and our equipment to meet those demands if we want to handle this influx."
To do that, commissioners Tuesday approved two budget amendments -- one for $595,720 for salaries and benefits and the other for $23,000 medical supplies.
"With that in mind we are going to need to hire about 30 part-timers to handle these calls," Powers said. "That is going to take us about $505,000. That includes their retirement, FICA, anything that we need to put into place, and then about $23,000 to equip spare trucks that we have to get them on the road."
Those are estimates, Powers said.
At the same time the county is looking at additional monthly revenues of about $166,000. Looking at the 10 months left in the current budget year that would mean about $1.6 million in additional revenues, Powers said.
Commission Chairman Joe Daughtery asked Powers to "expand" on the spare trucks.
"As you know, we have been putting in new EMS trucks," Powers said. "As we get a new one in, we take the oldest truck, and we pull it down into a spare. On the 29th, the day before we found out about JAS, Brian and I sat down and were talking about surplusing two or three of these EMS trucks -- ones that had over 200,000 miles that were original trucks in 2002 when we started the system.
"We talked about which ones we thought about going ahead and surplusing. When we found out the information on JAS, we stopped those conversations and looked at maybe equipping those to get us through with WayneNET."
There are two trucks that would be moved into the WayneNET, he said.
Also, the cost for two remounts -- placing the ambulance box on a new chassis -- is in the budget, he said. That is still six months out, he said.
"What we are looking at is instead of doing that, because they have not started those remounts yet, we would go ahead and buy two transit vans," Powers said. "We can get those at the same cost as the remounts and get the new transits.
"It would be the same as what we have now. We could have those in place in about two weeks."
Commissioner Ray Mayo said the news media had made "a big deal" out of the issue and that one TV station had reported that the county is getting help from other counties.
Powers said that is not correct.
"I am not saying we wouldn't request help if we need it," Powers said. "But mainly outside counties come in to help us on the emergency side. So if our units are tied up, we will have maybe Greene County, Johnston or Lenoir have come in to assist us on the emergency side, but not on non-emergency transport. No."
There was some talk in the media about outside help coming into counties that do not have anything like WayneNET, Commissioner Joe Gurley said.
"The state does have a plan where it will send in non-emergency transports to assist," Powers said. "Wayne County is fortunate that we have a non-emergency transport system. Most counties do not have that. They contract that out to other corporations. So those other 16 counties were getting help from others counties, but we were not."
Commissioner Bill Pate said he had read that one reason JAS had closed was because of trouble in collecting reimbursements.
"We are not having those problems, are we?" Pate said.
"No we are not having problems getting reimbursement," Powers said.
Pate also asked Powers if logistics were being worked out as to where the additional units would be placed.
Powers said he had just spoken by phone with Kendall Lee, county facilities director, about that issue.
"You know we had moved WayneNET over to Station 5 on New Hope (Road) and (U.S.) 13," Powers said. "We have started pulling some units back into the Madison Avenue station. So we are running WayneNET out of both of those."
Powers said he also had met with Wood about where the units could be placed.
"We do have some options with some fire stations that we have in place and some EMS stations as well where we could temporarily house," Powers said.
Daughtery asked if the county would be able to acquire any of the JAS equipment.
"The concern we have is that we still haven't nailed down what their legal position is," Wood said. "That equipment may be tied up in liens. We just don't know that yet. We are going on the assumption that we will not, but if it gets freed up we will certainly look at it."
Powers said the county had contacted the owner and that currently nothing is available.