As the Guthrie County Emergency Services Advisory Council continues to work on a proposal for a countywide service, there are some short term and long term goals that have been identified.

Guthrie County Health Services Director Jotham Arber tells Raccoon Valley Radio that should a countywide service be approved, plans to work on the short term goals would most likely be enacted shortly after, and then be built upon as time goes on, and shares what he believes is the biggest goal.

“We need to get more volunteers. We’ve got to grow our volunteer base, and we’ve got to train them. We need to make sure that the training that they get is quality training, and that they don’t lose their ability to use their skills, because sometimes we don’t have high call volumes. So we need to make sure that when we have a volunteer, if they’re not able to go on a trauma call every week, which we don’t usually have a trauma call every week and we’re thankful for that, but we need to make sure that when we do have that trauma call, that that volunteer has the training that they need.”

Arber says that one way to get more volunteers is to offer local trainings to not only keep volunteers up to date on what they need to know, but to also make it easier to have individuals become volunteers as well. He adds that another short term goal would be to make sure that current equipment is in good condition and maintained, and is replaced when needed. Arber says that at the time, the long term goal is to get a governance system in place to help run the system that would be put in place, including handling the funding.