Staff photo / Dan Pompili Boardman Township fire Chief Mark Pitzer, right, discusses the contract the township signed with Lane LifeTrans for ambulance services, which was approved by trustees Monday. Police chief Todd Werth, left, listens to the conversatio

BOARDMAN — Trustees have approved a new contract for ambulance services in the township, but that does not mean officials are necessarily happy with it.

Trustee Thomas Costello and fire Chief Mark Pitzer said the three-year agreement with Lane LifeTrans, unanimously approved Monday, is simply the best deal for the short term.

“We worked with Lane to get the best contract we could get,” Costello said. “The contract we did agree to is not perfect. It’s better in some areas than it was, not as good in some areas as it was.”

Lane LifeTrans is one of only two ambulance services operating in Mahoning County, and the only one operating outside of Youngstown. EMT Ambulance has the contract for service within the city limits.

Costello said he feels that Lane remains the only viable option.

“I’ll bluntly say I really have very strong feelings to not deal with the other ambulance company in our area,” he said. “I just did not feel comfortable, having gotten to know that company over the last several years when I led a group trying to coordinate care for EMS services in Mahoning County. Trustees lamented that effort at regionalized EMS coordination.

“I am of the belief that doing this ambulance service in house is the way to go,” said Trustee Larry Moliterno. “It’s very disappointing that the other communities locally don’t understand what the problem is in this county, and that this is a countywide issue that we should be addressing collectively. So, this contract is going to get us through for a while, but this is not a long-term solution.”

Costello agreed that providing paramedic and EMT service through the fire department is the optimal solution, but he said the money just is not there.

“We’d love to be able to provide it through our firefighters who do an excellent job, but quite honestly, the cost of the ambulance, the cost of equipment, the cost of staffing, the cost of getting paramedics, is prohibitive without getting new money,” he said.

In November, township voters rejected a 4.5-mill, five-year levy that would have generated $6.1 million to provide ambulance service in the township.

That leaves Lane to continue providing most of the service for Boardman, and largely on the company’s terms, Costello said.

“In negotiations with Lane, we tried to work with them to get as much increase in services as we were able to get,” he said.

The biggest drawback, Costello said, is that Lane will no longer guarantee a paramedic is on the unit they send to a call.

“That’s a negative because there’s a limited amount of service that an EMT can provide, as opposed to a paramedic,” he said.

Pitzer said that also puts a strain on his department.

“Very often our firefighters are the ones on scene providing care for one of our residents and waiting for an ambulance,” he said. “Now the burden may fall to one of our paramedics to have to ride into the hospital to provide that care because we have a duty to act.”

Pitzer said that minimum staffing levels for fire department vehicles — established and mandated to ensure safety when the department responds to emergency calls — mean that if the paramedic on a Boardman fire truck has to ride in the Lane LifeTrans ambulance to ensure critical care en route to the hospital, then the fire department vehicle he was staffing is out of commission until he returns to the station.

Pitzer said the township also has to continue its discussions with Lane to correct what he sees as another problem with the agreement.

Boardman Fire Department does have its own ambulance, Medic 71, which the township bought for about $300,000 last year — Costello notes that the cost of a similar unit is now over $400,000.

The problem is that the department cannot always staff it. But when it is in service, Pitzer wants to ensure that it is used. He said that when Lane’s two Boardman-based ambulances are in use and another call comes for service in the township, the company wants to send its own ambulance to respond.

“Well, that ambulance could be in Austintown or somewhere else,” he said.

Pitzer said that if Medic 71 is available and closer to the call, it should be used first.

In general, Pitzer is not pleased with the way Lane has operated.

“This is the third contract in a row when the level of service has been reduced by Lane LifeTrans, from response times to now the level of care,” he said.

In the last contract, Lane was supposed to be on scene within 6 minutes, and was expected to meet that obligation 75% of the time. Pitzer said they only did so on 50% of calls in Boardman.

He said the new contract only requires them to be on scene within 8 minutes, without a percentage threshold to meet, and the new deal allows for them to factor in weather, which may further delay response times.

“We need to figure out a plan moving forward.”

Costello said he is pleased that Lane will send another ambulance toward Boardman as soon as the second ambulance leaves for any reason. In the past, Lane would wait until there was a call for service before sending the additional unit to fill the gap.

Costello said he has had conversations about regionalizing ambulance service with at least one supportive Mahoning County commissioner, and with Mahoning County Auditor Ralph Meacham. He said he intends to resurrect his old committee and try again to unite fire departments in the county to coordinate emergency medical service.

No one from Lane LifeTrans was at the meeting.