Four-town EMS district finalizes its first budget

The Northwoods Emergency Medical Services District (NEMSD) finalized its 2025 budget during an Oct. 30 meeting, which lasted roughly three hours.

NEMSD board of directors president John Hanson told The Lakeland Times on Oct. 31 the finalized budget approved to present to the four towns totals $1,747,538. 

The district is a consolidation of the volunteer emergency medical services of Boulder Junction, Manitowish Waters, Presque Isle and Winchester. 

This is its first budget cycle and NEMSD was created to mitigate issues of dwindling volunteers and improve response times. 

Jason Joling, formerly EMS chief of the Wisconsin Rapids Fire Department, was hired to be the district’s service director. Jessie Mabie, formerly EMS service director of the Manitowish Waters Fire Company, was hired to be the district’s assistant director.

Each town, Hanson said, will now have to adopt resolutions and finalize their budgets before the district’s funding can come through. 

He said a budget previously created amounted to less than what was ultimately finalized, which was $1,240,566. 

However, Hanson indicated, directors Phil Harris of Presque Isle and Steve Herzberg of Winchester were for the bigger budget to guarantee NEMSD had sufficient funds to get on its feet and taxpayers wouldn’t have to be asked for funding again. 

Each of the town boards involved will have to adopt resolutions to present the NEMSD portion of their budgets at their respective budget hearings and annual meetings and electors will then authorize their town tax levies. 

Hanson said he thinks the finalized budget the board of directors approved is more money than needed. He said he expressed his opinion to the board and it was one of the bigger hurdles encountered during the budget crafting process.

“Well, once all of the towns have their budget hearings and special meetings to approve the levy, then it’s done,” Hanson said. “And, actually, the towns are the ones that have to make the final decision on the budget and what they’re going to appropriate.”

Hanson, who is also the Manitowish Waters town chairman, said Manitowish Waters electors will have to authorize the town board to exceed its levy limit to pay for its share of the NEMSD budget. 

He indicated the town board will not have to ask electors again to exceed the levy limit next year, but admitted getting this all squared away is “complicated.”

Next year, Hanson indicated, the budget process will be easier because this first budget will be used as a starting point. The board of directors, he said, will be able to see where more money is needed in it and where less money is needed in it “and then you can finally make a reasonable proposal for 2026.”

“So that’s just the way it is,” Hanson said. “You know … I’ll use my really scientific term when I describe this: it’s a SWAG … a scientific wild ass guess.”

Besides the budget, everything else for NEMSD is going well, he said.

Hanson said there’s a list of candidates that will be interviewed “late November, December” to start working for the district and an interview committee has been established for that. 

The Presque Isle town board approved a resolution already to ask electors about funding NEMSD at its budget hearing and annual meeting.

Harris told the Times his feeling is it would be bad if the district was starting up only to realize not enough money was appropriated. 

“We just can’t do that … and the truth of the matter is, it’s all really wonderful,” he said. “With the revised budget numbers we talked about almost two years ago, insurance has gone up exponentially for all of us personally, and the fact of the matter is the assessed value per $100,000 isn’t even $7 more than what they had talked to electors about almost two years ago. So the difference to the taxpayers (in price) is going to be insignificant, but the service they’re going to get is going to be exceptional.”

Trevor Greene may be reached via email at [email protected].