When Webster County voters approved a new tax in March to support emergency medical services, an ambulance service operated by the Otho Fire Department was not part of the proposal.

But Otho now has an operating ambulance service, and its leaders want about $75,000 from the new EMS tax to support it.

“You all are aware that I have attended many of your committee meetings and at each and every meeting I am fairly sure that I have expressed the fact that Otho EMS was a transport agency and should be included in the funding planning,” Otho Fire Chief Marty Smith told the Webster County EMS Advisory Council Wednesday evening.

Council members noted that when planning for the referendum vote on the EMS levy began almost two years ago, the Otho Fire Department was not providing ambulance service.

“When this whole thing was announced, Otho wasn’t even a transport service,” Fort Dodge City Councilman Cameron Nelson said.

Other council members questioned the sustainability of Otho’s ambulance service, which has only been operating since February.

Webster County Supervisor Niki Conrad said she wants “a little more comfort on the sustainability level.”

“These are real people’s dollars that they have given to the government through their taxes and I’m not willing to give them to just anybody who says ‘Oh, I can do it,”” she said.

At the conclusion of a sometimes testy two-hour meeting in a packed supervisors’ meeting room in the Webster County Courthouse, the council asked for more information.

The Otho Fire Department was directed to provide data on its emergency medical responses dating back to the start of its ambulance service on Feb. 1. The department has provided figures dating from May 1.

Because the $75,000 Otho is requesting would come from Fort Dodge’s share of the revenue, Fire Chief Matt Price was asked how that would impact his agency.

The council will meet on Oct. 22 to again consider the issue.

On March 4, Webster County voters approved a new property tax levy of 75 cents per $1,000 of taxable value to pay for emergency medical care as an essential service. The voters approved that by an 83 percent margin.

That tax is estimated to generate $1.6 million annually.

The proposal placed before the voters called for dividing the bulk of that money, about $1.4 million, between the three ambulance services then operating in the county: the Fort Dodge Fire Department, Southwest Webster Emergency Medical Service in Gowrie and the Dayton Rescue Squad.

The Fort Dodge Fire Department, which has the largest ambulance response district extending from 280th Street south of the city to the northern boundary of Webster County, was to get 76 percent of that $1.4 million.

Southwest Webster Emergency Medical Service was to get 14 percent, while Dayton Rescue Squad was to get 10 percent.

A functioning ambulance service in Otho will reduce the area south of the city the Fire Department would have to cover. But because the Fire Department has the only paramedic level service in the county, it will still have to respond into that area for the most serious calls.

The Otho Fire Department responded to 37 emergency medical calls between May 1 and Oct. 1, according to Dylan Hagen, who in addition to being the county’s emergency management coordinator is also the assistant fire chief and EMS coordinator in Otho.

He said 26 people were transported to the hospital as a result of those 37 calls.

He said he didn’t provide statistics dating back to the February start of the ambulance service because “initially there wasn’t good capture of data.”

Nelson said he wanted to see the response data dating back to the beginning of the ambulance service.

Smith said that information will be provided to the council today.

While about $1.4 million of the tax revenue will go to the ambulance services, each volunteer fire department that acts as an emergency medical first responder would get $10,000 a year if they get certified by the state. Another $100,000 would fund a county emergency medical service coordinator position.