New Ambulance Director Will Face Serious Challenges
By Gordon Hopkins
Cheyanne Kuehn has been selected to replace Alan Rosenthal as director of Ambulance District #33, effective immediately.
Three candidates were interviewed by Jefferson County Commissioners and Dr. Craig J. Shumard M.D., with Jefferson Community Health & Life, on Tuesday, November 1, 2022, in the commissioners’ meeting room at the Jefferson County Courthouse. The interviews were open to the public.
The decision was made later during that same meeting.
Kuehn began with the Ambulance service as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT).
“I just recently went through paramedic school,” Kuehn advised commissioners. “It’s nice to work in town and we work with a bunch of great people, have some great people in this community to help and, so far, I just really like it, so I’d like to send our department in the right direction.”
Kuehn added “I’d like for us to become a little bit more involved in the public, and I’d like to work with more of the surrounding volunteer departments to help better them to help, too.”
After the vote, commissioners stressed the difficulty of the decision. Commissioner Gale Pohlmann said, “I think we’re fortunate to have those three as well as the rest of the staff that we have.”
“We contacted various hospital staff,” said commissioner Michael Dux. “And we listened to them, what their recommendations were. And they said we also had three excellent candidates.”
Commissioners then called Kuehn and the other two candidates, Catherine Lovgren and Greg Neemann, to inform them of their decision.
The new director will face considerable challenges in her new role. Chief among them is the question of continued funding for the department.
Jefferson County is unique in that it is the only county in Nebraska that operates its own ambulance service. Due to rising costs and rising salaries, commissioners were recently forced to raise the tax levy by 4.66 percent. According to commissioners, the ambulance service makes up approximately 22 percent of the county’s budget.
Commissioner spoke at length with each candidate about potential changes to address the budget. Among possible actions under consideration are privatizing the service or partnering with the hospital or fire departments.
One recommendation Kuehn made during her interview is adding more part-time staff, “Then we’re not getting paid overtime so much. The full-timers won’t have to pick up so many shifts.”
Kuehn said, “There’s an EMT class going on in town right now. So that’d be a good place to start recruiting some people that are going to be brand new, but we can mold them into the people that we want them to be, the employees that we want them to be. So, I think with more part timers can help with burnout.”
Despite the costs and other difficulties, commissioners indicated their continued commitment to maintaining the ambulance service. Pohlmann said, “I think our intent in all of this, and the days ahead, as we talked about some restructuring, we all agree that we want to maintain an ALS (Advanced Life Support) ambulance service within the county. And we know there are ways to do it, that we can maintain this and, yet, save the taxpayers some money.”
