Cascade Locks offering incentive program for EMS volunteers

According to a report by Cascade Locks Fire and EMS Station Captain Jesse Metheny during a July 28 city council meeting, the department currently consists of “two paid staff paramedics, two paramedic volunteers, one intermediate, four EMT Basics, one EMR, and two firefighters.”

Metheny noted in a report to council members that “frequently the City of Cascade Locks Emergency Services department turns over ambulance transfers to our mutual aid partners for Advanced Life Support care (ALS) that we cannot provide 24 hours a day. We also on occasion do not have anyone available to respond to an emergency call, forcing our mutual aid partners to cover our assignments.”

City Administrator Gordon Zimmerman explained that with less volunteers, more calls are picked up by agencies that provide mutual aid, which can mean less revenue for Cascade Locks from collected ambulance fees.

“You can never have enough volunteers,” he noted.

To help with recruitment, and to help retain current volunteers, the city approved a $10,000 “extra labor” line item in the budget this fiscal year to begin a program to improve staffing, coverage, and revenue generation for the department.

The program consists of three parts. For one, Zimmerman said the council authorized $5,000 to be used for overtime for full-time paid staff that respond to calls outside normally scheduled hours when there is an emergency situation that involves the transport of a patient to the hospital. Another $5,000 was allocated for a stipend that pays out anywhere from $25 to $40 per incident, depending on the EMR or EMT level of the volunteer.

The other part of the program is an “intern scholarship.” The scholarship pays for the training of one volunteer to go through an accredited paramedic training program.

In his report to council, Metheny stated that these programs are in use at other departments and “have proven to improve volunteer recruitment and retention in many departments and would likely improve our overall volunteer attendance and morale.”

The hope is to not only draw more volunteers from Cascade Locks, but also from other areas. Zimmerman said one of the current volunteers is from outside the area and came here specifically because he desired rural firefighting experience, as opposed to urban.

“If we can find more people like that to help us out, that would be great,” he said.

According to Zimmerman, the success of the program will be monitored on a monthly basis and reevaluated during budget planning for the next fiscal year.