YOUNGSTOWN — City council by a 5-1 vote Friday approved legislation that would appropriate nearly $3.968 million in federal American Rescue Plan money to fund a three-year contract with Emergency Medical Transport to provide Youngstown with emergency ambulance services.

Six of city council’s seven members had to approve the legislation for it to become effective immediately.

The city’s board of control — involving the law director, mayor and finance director — approved the new contract with EMT, which would begin service Jan. 1, 2023, when the agreement with its current service provider AMR Ambulance ends.

In casting his no vote, Councilman Jimmy Hughes, D-2nd Ward, said he wasn’t happy that this course of action was the only alternative to the AMR service.

“I would have liked to have better options to serve the public. We had a year to do this, and this is all that was offered,” Hughes said after the vote.

Council members, except absent Councilwoman Basia Adamczak, D-7th Ward, asked questions of the board of control, fire Chief Barry Finley and EMT representative Kenneth Joseph. Most council members wondered how this was the only option available as an alternative to AMR.

The EMT contract, with an optional two-year renewal, would pay EMT $1,284,000 for the first year with a 3 percent increase for the second and third years.

Youngstown Law Director Jeff Limbian said this is the best resolution of “a very difficult circumstance.” He said because the measure did not pass as an emergency, EMT will not get paid until Jan. 15.

In answering a question, Limbian said a contingency plan was in place if the EMT contract didn’t pass, but he declined to elaborate.

ABOUT EMT

Emergency Medical Transport is based in North Canton, but has a contract with the city of Warren to provide 911 service and other transports, such as running patients between hospitals and / or nursing homes. It has a substation on South Street SE in Warren, and Joseph said it has more ambulances and equipment to service Youngstown calls.

“The city the size of Youngstown, four would be the right number to service the city,” Joseph said.

As for setting up shop in the city, Joseph said he has had some discussions with AMR officials about using its location in Youngstown and possibly hiring some of its paramedics. Finley said he talked to a Mercy Health official about using its ambulance garage north of its Belmont Avenue hospital.

Finley said Joseph reached out to him about two Thursdays ago when he learned about the city possibly losing ambulance service. Mayor Jamael Tito Brown said he talked to Warren Mayor Doug Franklin about the quality of EMT’s service in his city.

The legislation states that ARP funds can be used to cover direct expenses to administer an ambulance service.

ABOUT AMR

AMR Ambulance, meanwhile, recently had asked for an annual subsidy from Youngstown of $1.8 million to $2.6 million to continue to provide ambulance service to the city, or the company would end its services. The city currently does not pay a subsidy to AMR.

Councilman Julius Oliver, D-1st Ward, said he is happy to see AMR ambulance leave.

“It has been a bad experience. It’s like you were in school and the bully keeps taking your lunch money,” Oliver said.

Limbian wrote a letter to AMR earlier this month saying the AMR proposal was “untenable and unacceptable as a subsidy,” and “not a fair or wise expenditure of public funds.”

Emergency Medical Transport Inc. also has stations in Alliance and Massillon in Stark County, a “Mahoning Valley Division” in Salem and operations in Belmont, Harrison and Carroll counties in Ohio and two counties in western West Virginia, according to its website.

Joseph said he is pretty sure his company is one of the two largest ambulance providers in the state.