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EMS issues loom large in county candidate debate
In the fall of 2017, the biggest issue facing Putnam County government was that of ambulance coverage.
The issue has been back on the minds of residents again in recent months with the announcement that Putnam County Operation Life has reduced its ambulance staffing levels from three full-time ambulances to two.
The questions of emergency medical services are not going away and will have to be dealt with by the county leaders who are elected to four-year terms in next month’s election.
District 2 County Commissioner Rick Woodall, his Democratic challenger Steve Cash and Democratic District 3 county council candidate Matt Cummings grappled with these and other questions in the second Candidate Forum sponsored by the Greencastle League of Women Voters, WGRE radio and the Banner Graphic Tuesday evening.
In both the commissioner and council portions of the program, an Operation Life question was the first or second asked by the panelists.
Woodall called the EMS question “one of the biggest issues I have dealt with for the last four years,” later saying it is the only one that has kept him up at night.
“In the county contract, it says that the EMS provider has to provide quality ambulance service to cover the entire county 24-7,” Woodall said. “It does not say anywhere how many ambulances.”
However, he quickly countered this point.
“With that said, we had two (providers) bid on that service — we had STAR and we had Operation Life,” Woodall said. “Both of those directors recommended three ambulances. Once we got into it, due to the budget, we could not do three ambulances. They’re doing two and three at certain peak periods of the day, week, evening.”
Cash responded that perhaps the ambulance coverage has not been adequate, citing a recent example of a long response time to Putnam Park Road Course south of Mount Meridian.
“Thirty minutes later, they didn’t get Operation Life. They didn’t get STAR from Greencastle. They got STAR from Brazil,” Cash said. “Thirty minutes is a long time.”
Cash also questioned if the STAR option had been investigated heavily enough.
“I think when the decision was made, they questioned STAR’s quality,” Cash said, “but I question whether there was as much investigation as there needed to be as to the quality.”
However, Woodall rebutted that he poured a lot of time into preparing for the decision.
“I took the lead of the commissioners when the ambulance service came up,” Woodall said. “I spent approximately five months driving around, going to other counties investigating STAR and the services they provided and the things that they did. If you look all over the state, there’s 20 different ways that counties do ambulance services.”
Ultimately, STAR’s bid was much lower than Operation Life’s but Woodall and fellow commissioners David Berry and Don Walton were suspicious of the viability of such a low bid.
“I felt that when STAR bid $60,000 for ours for 3,100 runs a year and then they bid $200,000 to Clay County for 2,000 runs a year, along with everything else they had to do, that was one of the determining factors,” Woodall said.
Cash countered that low bids are often a function of initially trying to get someone’s business.
“I know how bids work and sometimes you’ve got to submit a low bid to get into the operation and then you can increase it from there,” Cash said. “That issue, I would have questioned a little bit too.”
The challenger also said perhaps there was a conflict of interest for Woodall, who sits on the Operation Life Board.
However, Woodall’s position on the board is as the representative of the Putnam County Commissioners.
Cummings, whose Republican opponent Danny Wallace was not in attendance, also had some ideas about assessing the quality of coverage in the county.
“The most important thing is, when you call 911, how fast do people show up?” Cummings asked. “If that means it takes 20 minutes to get to northwest Putnam County -- if you can even make it over the bridges and the roads through the potholes and everything. We’ve got to look at that and we’ve got to fix it.”
He said low response times matter when a family member is in a serious situation.
“I would argue that we need to evaluate,” Cummings said. “We need to look at budgets, we need to look at ambulance runs, we need to look at the data that they’re producing. And we need to figure out how it works. We need to find the best system. If that means that we need to have three ambulances, we need to prioritize the health and safety of our community.”
Ambulances weren’t the only public health question on the agenda, as addiction seemed to be on the minds of all candidates in attendance, including the township trustee candidates who will be covered in an upcoming edition of the Banner Graphic.
Cummings made it one of the opening points of what he called “a job interview for all the citizens of Putnam County,” before later returning to the question in more depth, referring to a proposed treatment center that drew much opposition due to its proximity to a Greencastle elementary school.
“I think our community needs treatment,” Cummings said. “We have a meth problem. We need to talk about it. We either fund it at the end side, which is people going to jail, people not being economically viable. Or we provide treatment — which is more cost-effective — in the beginning, that will reduce those rates.”
While the focus of the Putnam County Council has traditionally been rather narrow, sticking to the job of guarding the county budget, Cummings expressed a desire to open up what comes before the council, to change budget priorities and bring new programs and services into the county.
These include questions about education, community centers and drug treatment.
“We’ve seen county governments fund quality after-school programs. We’ve seen county governments fund recreational centers. We’ve seen them fund community centers. We’ve seen them fund treatment centers,” Cummings said.
“If we could organize our funds and put them toward a strategic direction that will allow our kids to embrace quality education, to be connected to STEM-based education. If we could somehow earmark money to enhance those levels, I would definitely be in support of that.”
Of course, he also knows that the question of county roads will never be far from citizens’ minds.
“I would also say that we have to figure out the road system. We have to figure out how that our bridges are ready that ambulances and school buses can go down them, that the police can go down them. And that as we’re out on our bicycles or in our cars, that we’re not playing ‘Frogger’ as we go down the roads, which is one of my favorite games to play.”
Along with these infrastructure questions, Cummings said it is vital that the county play a role in bringing better internet service to rural areas.
“Our people who are out doing jobs out in rural agricultural settings need to have high-speed access to these resources to be more competitive. We’re talking about drone-based farming, we’re talking about self-driving tractors,” Cummings said. “If we’ve got no Wi-Fi out there, how are they going to work?”
He added that such connectivity, along with community educational programming, is vital to our children’s futures.
“I think these are things that county government, city government and our state government can partner on to enhance our community,” Cummings said.
In the commissioners’ race, both men expressed their desire to work for the entire county, not just District 2 (Clinton, Greencastle, Madison and Marion townships).
Cash said it’s a concept he’s familiar with in private business.
“I’ve been doing that for about 40 years,” Cash said. “In my agribusiness, I cover all of Putnam County and actually 11 counties. I talk to people in Russellville. I have people in Bainbridge. I have people at Roachdale. I have people at Cloverdale, Belle Union, Fillmore.
“Part of the reason I ran for commissioner is I went to different parts of the county and they were telling me about what needed to be done,” he added.
Woodall said this has been a concerted effort among the three commissioners in the last four years.
“My thought was, I’m voted on by the entire county,” Woodall said. “I know I represent the four townships in the middle, but I represent the entire county. If most of the roads that need fixed are in District 1, then those are the roads that we fix. I understand that I represent District 2, but I feel I represent the entire county.”
Asked about how the county is spending its funds so far in 2018, Woodall took a moment to highlight savings on health insurance in recent years, another of the major projects on which he’s taken the lead.
“We will not go over budget this year. We have saved money this year in health care,” Woodall said. “We started new initiatives in the last two years for our employees. We did health fairs, we did heart screenings, we did lung screenings.
“Last year we received a $400,000-some rebate on our health care premiums. We pay right in the range of $1.4 to 1.7 million for health care for our county employees. By teaching them to do things a little different and helping them and doing clinics and things like that, we have saved money and been fiscally responsible.”
He also highlighted the savings the county has realized from paying off the Putnam County Jail and the plans they have for the $400,000 in annual funds that has freed.
“We are going to have to build an annex in the next few years,” Woodall said, noting that a third courtroom is coming to the county and that the courthouse is already bearing too much weight in old files. “The way things are set, if we do things right I truly believe we can be within 80 percent of paying cash for the new building, which is going to run about $2 million.”
Also addressing county funds, Cash admitted that he doesn’t have inside information but expressed a desire to work with state officials to increase local funding.
“I’m sure they’re hog-tied with what the state gives them,” Cash said. “One thing I can do and will do is continue to work with state government in funding counties. I’ve run Legislative Updates in Putnam County for the last 10 years. I have personal contacts with Rod Bray and John Crane. Jim Baird has also worked with us some. We need to work with them on these things.”
The question also gave Cash the opportunity to tout his 23.5 years on the South Putnam School Board.
“We were able to establish a rainy day fund,” Cash said. “Now, some of the emergencies that come up — the gym almost washing away with the water leak — they have the money to do those emergency projects. So, similar to what Rick has done, I have been a part of too.”
One question that hangs over both races is the viability of a Democratic candidate in a Putnam County race. Only Republicans have been elected to any county office since the mid-1990s.
While Cummings knows this makes for an uphill climb, he seems less concerned with party labels than with getting to work.
“It’s not Democrat. It’s not Republican. It’s not Libertarian,” Cummings said. “How do we become solutions-focused?”
For his part, Woodall felt like the minority on Tuesday, as the only Republican in any race who chose to take part in either of the forums the League of Women voters organized in recent weeks, though Republican Jill Bridgewater, unopposed in her re-election bid in county council District 2, was also in the audience Tuesday.
“I feel kind of like the Lone Ranger, but we’re moving on with that,” Woodall said with a laugh.
With local debates now at an end, Putnam County voters are already able to vote in the general election. Early voting opened Wednesday at the Putnam County Courthouse and is available each weekday from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. through Monday, Nov. 5. Early voting will also be available from 8 a.m.-3 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 27 and Saturday, Nov. 3.
For voters wanting a more traditional Election Day experience, six vote centers will be open from 6 a.m.-6 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 6.