By Allen Powell II
The Times-Picayune
WESTWEGO, La. — The Westwego City Council is considering merging its Emergency Medical Services department with the Westwego Police Department, just a few months after purchasing a new ambulance and asking voters to increase the EMS budget.
The restructuring was discussed briefly at Monday’s council meeting at the request of Councilman Melvin Guidry. Guidry said he would like to see the EMS department merged with the police department in an effort to increase efficiency and potentially increase the pay of its employees. The council decided to table the matter until next month.
Guidry said he’s been considering the move for several weeks and has discussed the change with Police Chief Dwayne Munch Sr., who has suggested ways to increase the response time and structure of the department. Guidry acknowledged that he hadn’t discussed the change with his fellow council members and that EMS Director Joseph T. Aldor was not in favor of the move.
The EMS department has a budget of about $400,000, funded by property tax and the general fund. In May, voters renewed the department’s millage and allowed the city to collect 7 mills instead of the 5.8 mills that had been collected. The change created an additional $60,000 in revenue for the department. Westwego has six full-time paramedics who respond to two to nine calls per day.
Munch said he is not seeking to take control of the department but would be willing to assume the responsibility if the council asked him. He said Aldor would remain as the supervisor of the paramedics if the two agencies were merged.
Munch said he thinks response time for the ambulances could be reduced to a maximum of 5 minutes per call, and said he would examine the city’s pay scale to make sure all salaries are in line with what comparable local agencies pay.
He said the city of Gretna has combined its ambulance and police departments and said that the city has some of the best service in the state.
However, Mayor John Shaddinger and Aldor said they don’t support the merger and think that while the department could improve its operations, there is no need for wholesale changes.
Shaddinger said the millage renewal was supported by roughly 85 percent of the city’s voters and he thinks that is proof that residents are pleased with the way the EMS department currently operates.
Shaddinger welcomed the suggestions from Munch on how to improve operations and said he thinks that all city departments have room for improvement.
Aldor, flanked at the meeting by many of the city’s paramedics, said he and his employees are disturbed that no one with the city approached them before discussions on the merger began. In the past few months, Aldor has had several heated exchanges with council members about improvements for the ambulance service and certain practices that he felt slighted paramedics.
The city recently agreed to purchase a $120,000 ambulance for paramedics but only after Guidry and Councilman Ted Munch chastised Aldor for waiting so long to request it.
However, Aldor said he doesn’t think that those flare-ups had anything to with the merger discussions. He said the issue came up about 14 years ago and again two years ago. Aldor agreed to implement as many of the suggestions as possible but said he and the other paramedics would prefer to be separate from the police.
Copyright 2009 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company