GUTHRIE CENTER, Iowa — Voters in Greene County are being asked to approve a ballot measure to raise over $700,000 a year to add an ambulance team in Guthrie Center.

For a number of years there was no ambulance located there, even though there’s a hospital in this town. Guthrie Center had ambulance coverage from one of four units stationed in Panora. Another crew is stationed in the town of Stuart, and another crew serves southern Guthrie County out of the town of Adair, just over the county line.

“The proposal for Guthrie County is to look at a sustainable funding mechanism to be able to help support our three EMS providers in Guthrie County, that’s really what the premise of the tax levy is for,” said Maggie Armstrong, a Guthrie County Supervisor. “It’s really about not enough funding to be able to support the three ambulance services that we have in Guthrie County so we know we need more ambulances and we need more staff, but in order to do that we need more funding and that’s really what this is about.”

The need for having more ambulance coverage in Guthrie County comes from concerns over the seven mile distance between the two counties.

“Seven miles away isn’t that far for an ambulance to get to a community but when we go further west, when we go further northwest, we have things that go on in those places,” said Steve Smith, a Guthrie County Supervisor. “Certainly in those holes that we might have that aren’t covered very well around the county we would like to have a better response time.”

Not all Guthrie County Supervisors are in favor of this idea. Supervisor Mike Dickson is opposed to the measure. He posted comments about this on his Facebook page.

“This is too much money with too little oversight to be handed over without a solid plan in place as to how these funds will be used,” wrote Dickson. “In my eyes it is the equivalent of handing over a blank check.”

Dickson added that he didn’t think this was the right decision for all residents of the county.

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