Ellis County EMS has outgrown its Hays headquarters in a building purchased in 1990.

There’s not enough room for the 40 total employees, student trainees, 8 emergency vehicles, EMT living quarters, patient transport records, training equipment, medical supplies, and office supplies.

“Our fifth ambulance and mass casualty trailer are parked in another building  for which we pay $800 a month rent, ” says EMS Director Kerry McCue.  “We have to go to a third building to retrieve patient transport records.”

State law requires ambulances and similar vehicles be parked indoors.

A half-cent county wide sales tax will be voted on May 14 which would in part, fund a new combined EMS/Rural Fire building.

“With Rural Fire we can share one facility with a dedicated training room, which would reduce costs to taxpayers,” McCue says.

EMS Training Director Lillian Slater constantly shifts around the training equipment.  “Some of it is cluttering our lobby, some of it is kept at Hays Medical Center, and I even store some in my house and garage, ” she says.  “All that back and forth is hard on the equipment.”

McCue invites the public to tour the current facility and see the “crowded conditions” and “safety issues” for themselves.

“This new building is not a Taj Mahal.  It is what we need, ” he says.

Watch Eagle Local News ECTV Channel 14 tonight/tomorrow as Becky Kiser tours EMS headquarters with McCue.