By Kevin Stairiker
LNP
LANCASTER, Pa.— The EMS landscape of Manheim Township will look very different soon.
At last Monday’s board of commissioners meeting, commissioners voted 4-1 to award a new EMS contract to Penn State Life Lion, the emergency services arm of Penn State Health. The decision to award a new EMS contract also shifts Manheim Township Ambulance Association’s status, which has been as the primary EMS provider in the area since 1971, to being a secondary provider.
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Of the four commissioners who approved the change involving Life Lion, only one, Celso Mesias, will still be a commissioner in 2026. The fifth commissioner, Carol Gifford, voted against the move citing transparency issues.
While public discussion of the change has happened at recent board meetings, fire chief Scott Little says that the move has been a topic dating back at least 12 years.
“Our modeling is after the success of other organizations. This isn’t something that we thought up in a dream one night,” says Little.
Penn State Life Lion will commence coverage in Township at the start of 2027, or potentially late 2026, according to Little. Under the plan, Manheim Township Fire Rescue will buy ambulances and equipment, and Life Lion will provide personnel who will then be trained alongside MTFR employees.
MTAA chief Shawn Watrous, however, says the board’s decision is a frustrating one. Watrous says that the organization has recently received notice of its termination as a primary provider. Watrous laments that the MTAA — which is a third-party organization not run directly by the Township — will likely not exist after attempts to get more funding for the organization from Township failed.
“We can’t generate enough revenue as secondary providers in Manheim Township, so we fully intend to shut down,” Watrous says. “We’ve never received any money from the Township, it’s only from billing and donations. We kind of just get by.”
Watrous says that in July 2024, he approached the commissioners with an ask of $250,000 to support the MTAA’s mission, which he says was ignored. The most recent MTAA annual budget was $2 million.
“They told us at the time that they didn’t have $250,000, and a year later, they’re paying a million a year for a third-party service,” says Watrous.
The 2026 Township budget, which is set for a vote on Monday, includes $918,396 earmarked for the start-up of ambulance service in Township. That number also includes a salary for a new deputy chief, who will be hired in the new year. According to contract details, Penn State Health will pay $3.8 million to hire employees and get the service up and running. The 2026 budget also details $7.6 million for Manheim Township Fire Rescue.
Watrous, who started at Township in 2022 and has two decades of EMS experience, describes the relationship between ambulance and fire services as initially good. However, it grew contentious, Watrous says, after he shot down an early attempt at merging the two organizations, saying that it wasn’t in the community’s best interest. He says he instead proposed giving board seats on the ambulance association’s own board to commissioners in exchange for Township funding. This idea, Watrous says, was shot down by Township Manager Rick Kane .
Kane became the current Township manager in early 2022 after serving as fire chief for 14 years. Despite repeated efforts, Kane did not respond to interview requests for this story.
Potential gaps
Little says the Township is resolving a long conversation about services.
“You really cannot be a sustainable third-party EMS agency in the environment that we’re in,” Little says. “Instead of just throwing money at the problem, Manheim Township board of commissioners are putting the money behind the fire rescue system.”
In September of this year, Township commissioners made a request for proposals for a new provider of emergency services. Prior to this action, Watrous said he provided monthly updates at commissioners’ meetings and says no problems about MTAA’s services were ever brought up to him.
According to Watrous, the Township’s decision to seek a new service provider immediately caused full and part-time staff at the ambulance association to flee for job security, bringing his staff down from 50 to 20 in a matter of months. Watrous says he will soon look for work elsewhere, too. Currently, the association has reduced its scheduling to one unit during the day and “maybe” another unit at night, he notes.
“I think the residents will receive, and are already receiving, a gap of coverage,” Watrous says.
Little says that in the event of MTAA shutting down prior to the start of Life Lion’s contract, a contingency is in place to have neighboring ambulance services fill gaps where they may appear.
When Township officials started talking about making this change also has been in debate.
During the public comment period of the Nov. 24 meeting, resident Laura Miller said that she was struggling to understand the process, as there seemingly had been no public discussion about the change.
In an interview that followed, Little says discussions started publicly as early as the fall during budget meetings. “You’ll see that September’s public board meeting, the RFP was passed 5-0,” he says. “Nobody in the audience stood up and spoke against, so the conversation has been public.”
“I think there just comes a moment in time where not everybody in the community wants to see change,” he continues. “I think the commissioners have been open to the residents, and I think partially that it’s kind of the unknown for the residents that aren’t always involved; to now see something new on the horizon scares them.”
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