Ambulance District Director Shrum Makes Pitch For Boost In Captains’ Pay

Ste. Genevieve Ambulance District captains may find a little extra in their pay checks down the road.

Kendall Shrum, the district’s administrator, suggested at last Thursday’s meeting that ambulance board members consider a pay boost for the captains in the  fiscal year 2019-20 budget.

“They’ve really stepped up over the last several months and made a lot of improvements with the medical direction, the protocols,” Shrum said. “We’re trying to improve the service, and they’re the ones that are actually doing a lot of the work for us on that.”

Shrum said each captain has an area of responsibility, such as ordering supplies, house maintenance, scheduling, etc.

“They’ve got their assignments, and they’re constantly helping cover for each other,” he said.

Currently the captains receive an extra $2,000 a year, which Shrum said works out to about 60 cents an hour.

“I don’t typically go to the board asking for any raises or anything, but I want to set the seeds now, early, and we can discuss it when we get into the budget stuff,” Shrum said. “I’m trying to get this to where you guys start thinking about things before.”

For the coming budget, which is typically approved in October and takes effect on November 1, Shrum suggested the captains’ stipend be raised to $1 an hour.

“They’re working hard,” he said. “They’re taking the calls at night. The amount of times I get phone calls in the middle of the night has been cut tenfold. It’s very rare I get a phone call in the middle of the night from a crew anymore, because the captains are handling that all the time, in-house, internally.”

See complete story in the May 22 edition of the Herald.