The Marion County Board of Supervisors voted to accept a letter submitted by the Marion County EMS Association to remove Mark Raymie from an advisory committee and replace the open seat with one of the other board members. Knoxville Fire Chief Cal Wyman read a statement to open the meeting, similar to the content of the letter submitted to the board prior to Tuesday’s meeting (read below). Supervisor Raymie promised a response at their meeting scheduled March 12th, and no decision was made this week other than to accept the letter.
“About a year ago the Marion County EMS Association stood before this board looking to establish an EMS advisory committee. Today we stand here again but instead of standing
in front of you with a solution, we stand here in disappointment. We are disappointed that we are not allowed to have open, direct, and honest conversations about EMS and
disappointed that we feel like our voices are not being heard. We have been voted out of meetings, not invited to other meetings, and now today, here we are again not able to openly discuss our request with the supervisors because of failure to place it on the agenda as a discussion item.
This committee has met and worked hard over the last year. This is our job and our passion. I can say with great confidence, that every one of us takes our jobs very seriously, and we all want nothing more than to better EMS services for Marion County. If we remember correctly, it was the second meeting that it was unanimously agreed that EMS needed to be essential. I think it’s important to not lose sight of the initial task at hand, deem EMS an essential service or not. That task has been completed. In our conversations with the State Bureau of EMS when this process is done correctly it can be completed in about a year. We have not started on the correct path, which could lead to anything established by the EMS Committee to be voided. The process starts when the Board of Supervisors votes to make EMS essential. This is the trigger for timelines for public hearings and an EMS Advisory Council to be formed to complete the rest of the process, including distribution of funds. While the EMS Council may be some of the same people as the EMS Committee their roles will be different.
When Marion County Public Health Director stated that the EMS committee was at a standstill, the public was confused and frustrated – and so were we. It was our opinion that the last couple of meetings were productive, and we had reached a lot of agreements. There have been several plans presented during our meetings: 3-4 came from Marion County Public Health and Mark and one from the EMS services that was not given any consideration. We were still able to work through all these different proposals and make compromises towards a proposal that could be agreeable to all. We are not at a standstill; we continue to feel like we come upon continual roadblocks that are being put in place due to one party’s opinion. We are still able to get a plan completed, we are still able to complete the task that was assigned to us by the Board of Supervisors, we just need to remove the roadblocks and replace them with someone who is open minded, willing to listen, and not there to push an agenda.
We ask the Marion County Board of Supervisors to act on this request as submitted so that we can go back to doing the work that we were tasked with by this board. If we can remove the road block the path to a mutually agreeable proposal could be in the very near future as we are very close to having a proposal ready to present to the board of supervisors.
Thank you for your consideration.”