Fredonia ambulance adds coverage area in Belgium

The Belgium Town Board on Monday made a tweak to its advanced life support 24/7 paramedic coverage through its joint program with the village and town of Fredonia and Village of Belgium.

“The intention was that Fredonia ambulance is going to cover the entire town,” Belgium Town Chairman Tom Winker said.

Port Washington’s fire department had been covering residences east of Highway LL, but the Town Board unanimously voted to shift those to the Fredonia department.

“The reason for that is very simple. We gave that agreement $87,000,” Winker said.

The four municipalities in the cooperative effort agreed to pay for the program using a formula based on average population, call volume and equalized value increase.

The town doesn’t have a contract with Port — Winker said he found one from 1996 that was good for a year — but it pays Port per call, which now is in addition to the $87,000 the town is paying Fredonia for the service.

“We can’t be double billed. It is wise of the town to do this,” Winker said. “No hard feelings with the City of Port or anybody. They’ve been good to us. We just need to spend our money wisely.”

In addition, Winker said, Port has a traffic issue that is expected to last for a few years due to the many construction vehicles traveling to and from the Vantage Data Centers Lighthouse Campus that borders the town to the south.

“With this data center, I don’t know if anybody could get through that train of quad-axle trucks down there any faster than anybody else could,” he said.

Resident Kevin Peiffer, who lives east of Highway LL, voiced concerns.

“To me, it’s all about the response time. Looking long term, is it wise to just cut everything off so now we’re just going solely with Fredonia?” he said. “If there’s a department that can get to my house four minutes faster, guess who I want to have come?”

Fredonia Fire Chief Brian Weyker said he and Belgium Fire Chief Pat Wester will monitor the response times, adding that the Port firehouse moving from downtown to next to Eernisse Funeral Home on Highway 33 could affect travel times.

“If it’s not right, we can come back here and talk with Tom and the board and say, ‘This isn’t right. We’ve got to change.’ We’ve always got that option,” he said.

“That’s great to hear,” Peiffer said.

The change will take time. Wester said each residence east of Highway LL has to be changed one by one in the county’s dispatch system to show Fredonia instead of Port as the responding department.

“That has to be done manually. It is a very time-consuming process,” he said.

The District 6 portion of the town is not included in the paramedic program and remains being served by the Random Lake Fire Department.