Meeting of April 1, 2025

degree program or just the lensure program. Um the degree program um it's essentially a paramedic course that teaches them how to become a paramedic but it also allows them to obtain their basic college education and associates degree um which as far as the skills of EMS doesn't really enhance anything but as far as like the administrative part and the documentation and the workings of the service. Uh the college degree does help with that. Um the bachelor's degree, the paramedic science science administration bachelor's degree um really hones in on management and that aspect of the job just street. Okay. in that paramedic science degree that he's indicating, is that another term for going from EMT to paramedic or is that the bachelor's type degree? Uh, yeah. So, this is just going from EMT to paramed. Okay. So, that's obviously a plus. When we hire him, we can provide assistance for him to obtain his paramedic and overcome that. Okay. And

what did we decide? I don't remember if we provide educational assistance. Was there was there like a one-year deal or Did we ever have a contract in place? I can't remember. I know we talked about it, but So, we have a long-standing uh contract agreement that if if someone goes to paramedic school and they apply, they sign the contract and stuff and they apply for reimbursement and every quarter they get reimbured up, I think it was $12,000. Um couple years back we presented and had a contract where we would pay for it up front that was when we had money which obviously is gone. That would be a big plus if we could still pay for it up front. However, it's kind of a loss. The way the contracts currently written is kind of a loss because if they fell down it doesn't say they have to reimburse or pay back. So we would have to As far as what you're talking about, Tammy, uh, you know, we did like an academy program or recruit program where we hired people on parttime just anybody that wanted to come hire them, put them through the class and pay them $15 an

hour if they were successful. We would re them and give them a job. Do you think we need to relook at that in terms of rewarding the contract where we can provide assistance? You know, just like this guy, if I if I'm diving into his resume and I'm thinking I'm unable to complete due to financial aid issues and I was wanting to become a paramedic, that might be a great way to retain him when he's moved from job to job every three months uh is by providing that assistance or something. Yeah, I think reworking that contract would be a big plus and us being able to offer at at least half or something like that would be a big motivator because that's really what hinders a lot of people from pursuing further education is that initial jump or that initial investment the class that we send people to most of the timeky Lexington they require a deposit of half of the total course up front before you can start and right now that would be about $6,000 and a lot people just don't have that laying around. So they never pursued the fair. So if we could offer that in the form of a contract to where we pay that initial tuition, I think

that would big. Could you perhaps maybe talk to Tammy and the judge about writing something up and presenting it to us as a fiscal court and letting us look at it because I'd love to see a way to retain some of these people when we hire them because I know it's uh we've talked about it in the past, but I know the numbers are significant when you go through the training and bringing them on and and then uh then months down the road they decide to go somewhere else. It's a we're probably spending $6,000 or more every time an employee, you know, makes that change or leaves. So, I'd love for y'all, if that's not too much trouble, to talk about that maybe among yourselves and bring us something to look at because I think it would be a great idea because that's one of the things that jumped out jumped out at me on the resume was you hate to see somebody not further their education due to financial, you know, reasons and especially if you feel like it's a good fit. I just want to bring that up. Uh and and one other point kind of to talk about what was talking about, our education department, they're putting together a presentation for you all to kind of jump back into that recruitment uh class. So be looking for that in the near future to kind of present. We're going to hire these people off the

street, put them through this class and train them to our standard and what we're looking for. And therefore, we'll know they will know what we expect. Okay, thanks. On that recruitment though, wasn't it something like the high schools? So the class that we put on we just put out across the county actually more than across the county to the state. Anybody that was interested when we interviewed we gave priority to people that were local. Um the school does have a program. Uh their program uh takes high school students that are interested in healthare. That's good discussion. I'm going to make a motion to hard Jacob Rubio. Second. Got a second by fourth district mag. Can they call the roll? Mr. Johnson, yes. Mr. Bl, yes. Judge Summers, yes. Miss Sanders, yes. Mr. Lock, yes.

Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Any comments? Well, last week was a beautiful week. However, this week isn't going very well with the storms and everything coming on. Um, Saturday was just if you didn't come to the parade, you missed out on a lot. It was just wonderful. Thank you, Mayor Jose, and all those that helped you get that going. Thank you, Sean. Yeah, I don't have much. I did want to touch on one thing and and I think maybe Brian and Karen, I don't got lucky and somehow escaped being tagged, but I was tagged a couple times on social media and stuff last night. talking to you briefly about it, but we've got several people here that might be able to help. But, uh, as Vera alluded to, there was some pretty bad storms over the weekend and a lot of those were, uh, tornado warnings and tornado actually touched down here in Bullet County. I guess my question is and we've kind of bounced around it time or two before, but I want to kind of lean on emergency management because we got on social media we were tagging and I got couple different direct messages

or something and then mayor, you might be able to help as well. You might know what I'm getting at, but uh I'm curious what our official response is to like individuals that may need to seek shelter. Now, I understand it's a kind of a controversial thing. it could be uh left up to the individual to personally find their own shelter or be prepared in the event of a disaster. But there's also a large group of people that feel like that whether it's the county or the city should have some facility uh available for individuals. Uh there was an individual that that uh made some long video and we got tagged and I know y'all probably seen it but said that he went over to the EMS building because he was told that's And and who knows where this information comes from, but that kind of comes full circle while I'm bringing this up is uh this individual ran or lived in a trailer park, lived in a trailer, but went over to EMS or emergency management building, was told that's where the shelter was. It was locked. He frantically went over to Walgreens and they had a sign that they were not accepting customers due to the store. So he was like, "Where do I go?" Uh, so I even as an elected official don't really know our our our our

position and even if there is one. If there's not that's fine, but I just think we need to communicate that with people. But in the event because we are expecting more thunderstorms or possible tornadoes and April, May, June seems to be the most frequently months in Kentucky. But there's a website called survivastorm.com because I was playing devil's advocate just like you know if if I didn't know anything and lived in a trailer and wanted to find shelter, public shelter, where do you go? Who do you contact? But unevitably even Red Cross, survive a storm.com, there's two or three other sites. Every place says contact your local emergency management agency to determine where the local shelter is. Uh, I know in some neighboring counties I've seen some different posts leading up to the to the storms about churches being open, schools being open, and certain things like that. I So, kind of rambling here, I guess, and and uh my question would be, do we have a facility designated? I know we talked and during the cold weather months we opened up, you know, a spot, but do we have a facility or building dedicated to those individuals that may not have a safe place to go in the event of a tornado, you know, approaching or or