Butler Eagle file photo

The Karns City Regional Ambulance Service bought property in Fairview Township that once was a trailer court to serve as the site of a new ambulance station.

The ambulance service bought a 7-acre property known as the Gifford estate at 1411 Kittanning Pike and subdivided it into two parcels. One parcel is a 4-acre lot for the new station, and the other has a three-bedroom brick home that the service is selling to pay off the mortgage, according to Mark Laurer, president of the ambulance service.

Currently, the service rents two stalls in the Petrolia Volunteer Fire Department station for its two ambulances and a shed it uses as an office.

Because the ambulance service doesn’t have the money to build the station, the service is working with the 11 municipalities it serves in Northeastern Butler County, the county commissioners and state and federal elected officials to obtain funding to build the station sometime in the future, he said.

“We’re working with the (Butler County Community Development Corporation) and state representatives and our state senator and the municipalities to come up with a plan for a reasonable building for the future of 11 municipalities we serve,” Lauer said. “This is their baby, so to speak. This is their responsibility by law. We’re steering the ship for them because they trust us and we have the know-how.”

Some of those municipalities impose EMS taxes that benefit the ambulance service and the others make annual contributions to the service. The ambulance service shares its financial information with those municipalities, he said.

Since being named president in 2021, Lauer said the service has used its proceeds to buy and pay off a new ambulance, buy a used ambulance and give wage increases to its staff of two full-time and 15 to 18 part-time emergency medical technicians and paramedics. He said he wishes he could have provided larger pay raises, and added that no members of the board of directors accept any pay.

“That’s how you run a good business — don’t make it top-heavy,” Lauer said.

At a county planning commission meeting Wednesday, Aug. 21, when the subdivision plan was approved, Lauer told board members that the service made $400,000 in the last fiscal year and spent $380,000 of it on wages and bills.

He told the commission that the existing septic system has more than enough capacity to serve the station because it was designed to accommodate 10 mobile homes.

Commission officials said the service needs approval from the state Department of Environmental Protection to use the septic system.

Lauer said the municipalities, county commissioners and state officials understand the service’s financial situation and realize the emergency medical service in the northeast part of the county is still in the throes of financial and staffing crises.

“It’s a big project for everybody involved. Everybody understands if we fail, no one's coming to help,” he said.

The service responds to an average of 80 calls a month, including calls in Armstrong County and other surrounding counties, and encountered a spike of 94 calls in July, he said.