By Heather McDonald

The village of Plover will have a year of providing Portage County residents with an additional ambulance that should reduce response times across the county by four to six minutes.

But even as the County Board approved the measure 20-4 Thursday, Nov. 9, County Executive Patty Dreier is laying out options to be considered as the county moves forward with a countywide Emergency Management Services (EMS) system.

Monday, Nov. 13, Dreier presented four options for county EMS at the Towns Association Meeting in Eau Pleine, including alternatives to the current system. Along with the existing model, the possibilities include an enterprise system, a municipal system and a combination of enterprise and municipal.

“When I have a really big decision to make in my own life, I’m not afraid of my list of options, to be frank and look at them all,” Dreier said Monday. “Maybe it brings us back to the same priority, the same solution you had before, but to me there’s no harm in stepping back and looking at all the options so you can see it freshly, and maybe you can make a wiser decision because of that.

“There’s got to be a way that we can get to a general consensus for the good of the whole community,” she said.

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