Controversy at SCWEMS special meeting

An emotional debate over Bill Dahlke’s involvement with additional pay for the Saratoga EMS occurred at a special meeting Thursday of the South Central Wyoming Emergency Medical Service (SCWEMS) Joint Powers Board (JPB).

At the special meeting, Bill Dahlke, former board chairman and current Saratoga representative to the board, offered his resignation from SCWEMS and left early.

The meeting was called by town of Elk Mountain Mayor Morgan Irene and held in Saratoga.

The SCWEMS JPB was formed in 2009 by an agreement between the towns of Elk Mountain, Medicine Bow, Saratoga, Riverside, Encampment and Carbon County.

The controversy is over a salary increase of one dollar per hour paid for daytime on-call hours, not approved by the SCWEMS board, only for the Saratoga-based volunteers.

According to Dahlke, the additional pay began following the loss of a SCWEMS volunteer in January 2013 who worked at the Platte Valley Medical Clinic in Saratoga. The loss lefta hole in EMS coverage for the south end of the county during daytime hours.

SCWEMS had been paying part of the volunteers salary at the medical clinic so that person could be on call for the ambulance service during work hours. At that point, Dahlke said he made the decision, as Ambulance Director and not as SCWEMS Chairman, to incentivize volunteers in Saratoga with extra pay, using his authority over $500 per month in discretionary spending.

Sometime prior to the May 2014 SCWEMS JPB meeting, the board discussed the pay increase approved by Dahlke, and decided it was not necessary. Dahlke said he is unsure of whether or not he told the station manager at that time to stop the extra pay. The pay increase remained in place for the Saratoga volunteers until May 2014 according to an internal audit.

During the May 2014 SCWEMS board meeting, discussion of the extra pay, and that it was not approved by the board, was recorded in the minutes. It was also recorded in the May minutes that SCWEMS treasurer Melisa Sikes and bookkeeper Linda Crane would research the issue.

The additional pay was immediately stopped after the May board meeting and now no one person can approve payroll according to Mark Kostovny, SCWEMS county representative. A practice of the station manager and a coordinator or the treasurer both approving time sheets was implemented in order to keep future payroll discrepancies from happening.

According to the internal audit performed by Sikes, reported at the June 2014 meeting, the additional salary was paid for 3,166 hours worked by Saratoga volunteers. However, according to Crane and SCWEMS board member Ken Drain the audit only reached as far back as the June 2013 payroll, which reflects May 2013 hours. The pay increase began as early as January 2013, according to Dahlke. Confirmation of the extent of the audit was sought from Sikes, but she declined to comment.

When Morgan Irene, chairing the special meeting, asked if the five to sixth months of additional pay was within the ambulance director’s discretionary spending limits, Dahlke confirmed it was.

The mechanics of how the pay increase was implemented remain unclear to the entirety of the board. At the special meeting there were accusations of volunteers having to falsify their time sheets in order to receive the additional pay.

According to Crane, the time sheets are composed of two pages. One page where volunteers tally their hours on call and the number of times they went out on ambulance runs, and another page provides the bookkeeper with a total number of hours and runs. The bookkeeper writes the paychecks from the totals and is not responsible for verifying the two pages of the time sheets match.

Crane confirmed in order for the additional pay to be received, volunteers had to double the number of daytime hours they actually worked.

Crane provided a verbal example of a time sheet from the May 2013 pay period where a volunteer had worked 218 call hours, made an adjustment for an additional 116 daytime on call hours in another column, and reported a total of 314 hours on the summary sheet used by the bookkeeper.

According to Crane, the time sheets were approved by the station manager, of which there have been at least three since the practice began. The station manager is the supervisor of the volunteer employees for each of the SCWEMS ambulance stations.

Dahlke has since been volunteering his services free of charge in order to pay back the funds, in opposition to the boards recommendation that he not do that. The consensus at the special meeting was that the volunteers who were paid the additional salary should not have to pay it back.

At the June 2014 SCWEMS board meeting, the minutes state “Roy Barber suggested we move on from this as it could destroy the entire service.” When asked to elaborate on his position, Barber responded in an email saying “At the next board meeting we will discuss how we will proceed with the operation of SCWEMS.”

Kostovny said he believes “SCWEMS stands as good and as strong as it always has.”

“The board made an investigation after they found out what was going on, made an evaluation, made a plan of action … no one person can approve payroll now,” Kostovny said.

Helen Weiland, SCWEMS Riverside representative, opposed a motion to take no further action on the Saratoga on-call pay issue at the June meeting. She is concerned that SCWEMS funding is essentially taxpayer money which originates from the municipalities that make up the Joint Powers Board, and that a full investigation should be conducted and finalized before the issue is put to rest.

“The board wanted to go forward and leave the issue alone. There are a few key individuals that don’t want to let it go.” Dahlke said during a Monday interview. His main concern is that EMS coverage was available. Dahlke has already left his position as board chairman, and is helping to train a replacement ambulance director. Dahlke is waiting until the end of a previously planned two-week vacation to see if he remains as the Saratoga representative, or will even work with SCWEMS at all.

Ken Drain hopes the issue will not harm SCWEMS. He is also appreciative of all of the work Dahlke as put into the service. “We started with $60,000 and the notion that we needed to have a service, and (Dahlke) basically guided us through this,” Drain said. SCWEMS now generates $600,000 to $750,000 per year, has 60 to 80 volunteers throughout the county and seven board members.

“The ambulance service is wonderful for the communities,” said Weiland, “but it has not been run with full participation, it has been a one or two-man show.” Weiland thinks that the service has grown to the point where it needs board members from outside of the EMS community.

“I’ve upset a few individuals from the Encampment/Riverside area and they have gone the political route to get me removed as ambulance director … When political pressure gets exerted on the system, the whole system can break down. Politics and EMS don’t mix,” Dahlke said.

Whatever happens, the consensus of the SCWEMS board and other participants at last week’s meeting is that the service is necessary to the county and that it should continue.