MERCER TWP -- Supervisors indicated during their monthly meeting Monday night, Nov. 18, that they have designated the Harrisville Volunteer Fire Department as their agency for quick response service, or QRS.

The arrangement is only waiting for Harrisville VFD to acquire its QRS license.

“As I understood it, they've applied for it, and are waiting on it,” Mercer Township supervisor John Bennett Jr. said. “So we plan to utilize them.”

Quick response service is a type of medical service that responds quickly to emergencies and provides care to patients in the minutes before an ambulance arrives.

Unlike a basic or advanced EMS setup, an agency licensed to perform quick response service in Pennsylvania is not required to use a vehicle when responding to a call, and has a minimum staffing of one EMS provider.

“They can't transport the patient,” Bennett said. “They can only assist in providing basic medical treatment. Early intervention on a medical situation is key, and that's why we would like to get a QRS agency to respond as quickly as possible.”

According to Bennett, this new arrangement does not change Mercer Township’s current relationship with Superior Ambulance Service, the township’s main emergency medical services provider.

“Currently, we use Superior Ambulance as our responding ambulance service, and that's not going to change,” Bennett said. “But the QRS will assist them in the event that they have a long response, or maybe more people are needed to control the scene.”

Supervisors approved a measure which would waive the township’s per capita tax for disabled veterans. This would apply to disabled veterans who already benefit from the waiving of Butler County’s property tax.

One supervisor indicated that the exemption would apply to “two or three” residents of the township.

“If they've been exempted from real estate tax, we're granting them exemption from the per capita tax as well,” said township secretary/treasurer Nikki Ciochetto.

The approval of the measure is contingent on whether the township can verify it has the authority to take this action, as there were some questions about whether or not it does.

“If it is not verified, and we are not allowed to do that, we built that into our motion and our motion doesn't move forward,” Bennett said.