Dear Gary,

First I want to thank all of you that turned out for the town council meeting last Tuesday, March 3. There are several things that need to be clarified concerning our volunteer ambulance crew and their job.

First off, we are very short handed of trained EMTs. We need a lot of you folks that are able to volunteer, take the training and join up to keep our ambulance operating in the future. It is intensive training and a challenge to all of you that are able. You don’t have to be in town to be on the crew. And though it is expensive, there will be monetary help available. If we get enough volunteers, the class would be held here in Oroville. So come on in to the city hall and see JoAnn Denney for an application form.

A note for all of you who may wish to help financially, checks need be made out specifically for what you want the donation to go for as the ambulance is city/rural business and help for the crew should be specified or training specified. There has been some confusion along this line before.

It was told mistakenly that the crew were a 501C3 organization, which they definitely are not. The crew are essentially paid volunteers, originally we didn’t get paid anything but we were given all our training.

It was suggested we supplement our short crew by bringing on some of Tonasket EMTs to give our short crew a breathing space before they totally burn out. It isn’t just that simple. There are legalities, financial and personnel issues to be tended to before we can get any of them some help. We have had a mess up in communications that brought the matter where it is and it has taken quite a long time to develop. Now it is going to just plain take time to straighten out all that has gone bad.

We need help and understanding that the volunteer ambulance is a community fact that is unique to our part of the country. There aren’t many like ours still operating. We need public support. Thank you all.

In God we trust,

Betty Roberts

Oroville