April 16, 2025
By: Dwayne Page
Higher pay for EMS employees?
During Tuesday night’s meeting, EMS Director Trent Phipps met with the budget committee of the county commission to ask for hefty hourly pay raises for the 20 EMS medical personnel on the staff. In his request, Phipps is seeking a $5.00 per hour increase in pay for them along with an increase in his own pay going from $61,040 in the 2024-25 budget to $90,000 in 2025-26.
“The line item at the top for my salary. We did that to make me higher (salary) than the highest paid paramedic on the list”, said EMS Director Phipps.
If approved as requested, the total budgeted line item in salaries for the 20 medical personnel combined would increase from $773,406 in the year 2024-25 to $1,021,996 in the year 2025-26. Part time pay would jump from $140,000 to $200,000 and overtime would go from $203,000 to $287,000.
Meanwhile the EMS budgetary line item for contracted services would increase from $40,000 to $75,000 and the uniform allowance would go from $5,000 to $7,000.
The total budget for the ambulance service, if approved as presented, would increase from $1,833,033 in the year 2024-25 to $2,337, 151 in the 2025-26 fiscal year.
DeKalb EMS staff currently work on 24 hours on and 72 hours off schedule.
In addition to addressing the budget committee in person, Director Phipps provided a written explanation for his request.
“Several counties in our area have made significant payroll increases and once again we are finding ourselves behind in the competition for new, young employees. I have a healthy list of part time EMTs and Advanced EMTs, but attracting new paramedics continues to be a problem. In the last few years, we have hired several Basic EMTs that have gone on to complete advanced school and even paramedic school. Some of them are tempted to go to these other counties for better pay and even better benefits. So, retention is a concern. I have submitted information about a few other counties that were found on social media. Some of these are our neighbors like Smith and Cannon, some are farther away but not any larger than DeKalb County. Some of them are running 24/48, so don’t get caught up on the pay rate as much as the yearly salary”.
“Smith County’s starting salary is more than a 15-year employee makes here on the year. The starting pay for Cannon County is our year 17. Cannon is a smaller county with a smaller service and population. They also do not have major tourist attractions like the lake or the Fiddlers Jamboree. Rhea County is very similar in demographics to us. Again, the $65,000 start out for paramedics there is greater than our 15 years pay scale. Bedford County is not a direct competitor to us but they are also starting paramedics out better than our 15-year employees”.
“I understand that many other problems face DeKalb County with jails and schools, but as our community continues to grow, we are going to be very behind on providing care. I would like to suggest a $3.00 to $5.00 raise at the base rate. This will reflect bringing more money for some of the employees that are higher on the pay scale. This will work as a method of retention for the newer employees when they see what a difference 5 years makes on the pay scale,” said Director Phipps.
As for the $35,000 increase costs for contracted services, Director Phipps said “We are using more stuff that involves apps, a cloud-based service through our monitoring to keep up with vital signs and things like that. Its kind of a wave of the future. I am also implementing a drug control program that will cost about $3,000 a year and it tracks all the narcotics where we will scan the labels with cell phones using a proprietary app. It will allow me to track every individual file,” he said.
Budget committee member Glynn Merriman said he thinks a $5.00 per hour increase in pay for EMS medical personnel as requested by Director Phipps is too steep and he isn’t in favor of raising property taxes again, after back-to-back years of tax hikes already.
“On this $5.00 an hour I think that’s going to be hard,” said Merriman. “I know you do great work, but we have had enough with tax increases as it is now. Some of these salaries are way up there. Here’s one (employee) who makes $40,000 and overtime is $6,200 a year. Another one makes $45,000 a year with $10,790 a year overtime. All this overtime is a lot of money. I can’t see giving a $5.00 pay raise. I’m not going to ask the taxpayers for another tax hike. I will not. All this overtime is unreal. Here’s another (employee) with $12,000 overtime. Here’s another with $10,000 overtime, and one with $11,000 overtime. This aint a rich county. I don’t see it,” said Merriman.
In response to Merriman’s concern about overtime pay, Director Phipps explained that “a lot of this year’s overtime that was paid out was filling two positions for about four months. One was filling my position from October 1 until January when I was hired to fill the spot (EMS Director) left vacant. I use mostly part-time people to fill the positions, but they were working the number of hours to pull the overtime. We also had one lady go out on maternity leave,” explained Director Phipps.
“Operating on a 24/72-hour schedule has dropped our overtime payouts significantly,” Phipps continued. “The way the cycles work now there is a couple of cycles in there where you don’t get but 64 regular hours and eight overtime hours. The 24/72 schedule has saved the county a lot of money even though we had to hire more personnel to run the shifts,” he said.
According to Director Phipps a shortage of paramedics creates a demand for them and it’s more difficult to retain personnel when they can make more money elsewhere.
“At the end of the day when you dial 911 somebody is coming and the quality (skill level) of who is coming depends on how much we can pay them,” said Director Phipps. “Every paramedic that works for us has hours upon hours of college credit and more than most nurses”.
“How can we continue to go up (raise salaries) after every other county goes up. There has to be a stopping place”, said Merriman.
The budget committee has not yet acted on EMS Director Phipps’ request.