At the March 23 Rushford City Council meeting, the council heard from Ambulance Director Joey Busse and EMTs Shannon and Evan Meier as they returned to the council to discuss ambulance on-call pay. They looked at the data from last year and the previous years before returning to make a suggestion.
In 2025, $62,500 was paid out for on-call pay. If the on-call pay had run on through the calls, it was estimated that total pay would have been around $65,000.
Since Clerk Tiffany Jacobson does not have access to the ambulance scheduling program, it becomes difficult for her to know who is on call and whether she should pay out for on-call pay or suspend it during a call.
Busse gave an example of a recent call with three patients. The ambulance responded with two fully staffed ambulances. The extra staff called in for the second ambulance could lose pay due to the on-call pay being docked. Busse noted that sometimes half of the staff gets docked and half don’t. His suggestion was to eliminate the suspension of on-call pay during a call for now.
Busse shared that they were thinking of eliminating the on-call and run pay for trainees on a ride along. There are two levels of EMTs according to Busse. Second level EMTs cannot run the back of the ambulance by themselves; primary level are qualified to be alone in the back of the ambulance. By eliminating pay for the ride alongs, money would be available for the increase in on-call pay.
Previously, people were getting docked on-call pay for showing up according to Busse. This was a mistake and no one knows how long that had been going on.
Mayor Leigh Volkman pointed out that the hours need to be tracked by department heads in the future and then turned over to the clerk for fact checking and assuring of the accuracy of the numbers. Volkman stressed that the end goal is to make the process as simple as possible. For the time being, Volkman said the adjustment should be made so people aren’t docked for on-call pay with the hours submitted for paying to be submitted by the ambulance director.
Volkman felt it was important to wait to discuss this further until City Administrator Hayden Stensgard is available as well. The appropriate time to request a change the pay structure would be when the city begins the budgeting process for the new year.
The ambulance billing system was also discussed. Apparently, the company doing the ambulance billing had folded. As a result, some runs had not been billed. Busse had noticed that some calls had not been billed and had tried to get to the bottom of the situation. Bills have been sent out at this time and some have been getting paid.
The old ambulance needs to be retrieved from its current location. An unsuccessful attempt to sell the ambulance had been made; an offer of $2,500 had been received. Once the ambulance is back in Rushford, the goal is to sell it via Darr Auction or possibly Facebook Marketplace.
Hunter Peterson Property
The council discussed access to the Hunter Peterson property. Originally, the road to the property was designated as a temporary road. It is still not listed as a road, but somehow was paved and posted with a street name.
This road may need to be surveyed by the city. As is, this wrinkle could hold up a sale of the property. It could be said that there is currently no access to the lot located near Darr’s Auction.
Some of the paperwork for a loan had already needed to be signed again when the bank name needed to be corrected.
Volkman commented that this would probably be one of the first things Stensgard would need to deal with as he comes on board at the city in a few days.
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