For the second meeting in a row, citizens used the comment portion of the Jackson County Board of Commissioners meeting Monday night to verbally attack commissioner Tom Crow for his role in a lawsuit filed by four citizens to stop work on the new West Jackson EMS station.
For the full story, see the Dec. 19 issue of The Jackson Herald.
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Recent Comments
Wed, May 22, 2013 - 10:00 AM
Howard named interim Supt. Read about it in the JCH.
Wed, May 22, 2013 - 09:56 AM
This is a sad story i feel so bad for the child. To visit your local flea markets go to http: [...]
Wed, May 22, 2013 - 09:22 AM
That's ashame you think that way about such a motivated and talented Educator such as Mrs. How [...]
Wed, May 22, 2013 - 08:17 AM
I don't think they should have charged the man for throwing a worthless mother out on the stre [...]
Wed, May 22, 2013 - 07:53 AM
We are lucky to have April, and lucky she is willing to take on the job. She has the level hea [...]
Wed, May 22, 2013 - 07:20 AM
I work in the system...She is good and will do a great job
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We the people are like sheep we just follow the so called leadership and re-elect them back into office. Sad. or plain apathy
As a tax payer of this county...I am still waiting for Mr. Yates and the other members of the BOC to explain to me why my family, my neighbors, the local school system has now been placed into a position of REDUCED response time. HOWEVER, a good portion of citizens within Hall, Gwinett, & Barrow county now reap the benefit of having an improved response time !!?? It would seem to me that Mr. Yates and the other commissioners have elected to favor non-Jackson county citizens over the tax paying citizens of Jackson county!!! Could this possibly be due to the commissioner who has a strong previlence & history with Braselton?
I'm also shocked at the response of this paper for carrying forth the postion that this situation rests at the feet of Tom Crow!! For the residence of those who have been ill effected it would seem that this whole problem rests with the commissioner who should be looking out for the benefit & well being of all of his constituates rather than just those who reside within the city limits of Braselton! Maybe 70% of the people surveyed were in favor of the new location, however this is only statistical information! If 70% of the people who responded to the survey reside within the Braselton area...OF COURSE...it will appear as though the MAJORITY of people support this move!! Why doesn't this paper go out into the field and survey / seek the opinions of those individuals who will not be left with diminished services!!! To suggest that this is not the right time for this fight is exactly what is wrong with government & media today! "Pick your fights" as they say...and with this saying so errodes the rights of the people & their faith in both the government & the media. Is there truely a difference between the two any more???
I guess as with all other issues & government "decisions" that are made, we (the dumb masses) will quitely go along with these decisions! Maybe what the real question should be is how does government interact with the people & how can / should this process be improved? Perhaps we should have BOC elections every year? As for me...I know commisioner Yates will not be receiving my vote whereas I would gladly vote for Mr. Crow who seems to be the only one who saw the big picture and tried to take the only available avenue to do the RIGHT THING!!!
Fact: Med 3 is in the same geographical location it has been in since it was first put in service over a decade ago so it hasn’t been “moved”. In fact the new location is closer to Jefferson than it has been for the last decade. Your ambulance wasn’t taken away from you. It is still where it always was which is the area with the population and call volume to support keeping it there. What is needed is ANOTHER ambulance, not moving the ambulance down the road. Fun Fact: Med 3’s territory covers over 15,000 people while Med 5 and Med 6 covers less than 12,000 COMBINED. Also, Med 3 has the LARGEST geographical territory to cover in the county. IF it were moved, it would pick up additional territory from Med 5 and Med 2 so it would be covering MORE population, and MORE ground, and more calls than it does now. How can it be justified that Med 5 will have LESS population and ground to cover when it already covers about a third of what Med 3 covers? Would Med 3’s call volume increase if it were moved to Tom Crow’s preferred spot? YES! Is there another ambulance close to come to you when Med 3 was out on another call? Let’s see:
Countywide average distance for 2nd and 3rd ambulance: 9.37 Miles (so you have two other ambulances within 10 road miles of you) There are 3 within 10 road miles of Jefferson so good for them!
Med 3 average distance for 2nd and 3rd ambulance: 13.05 Miles (so there isn’t another ambulance within 10 road miles of you) So it really doesn’t matter if it were moved or not because West Jackson taxpayers are still getting the shaft.
Fact: Med 3 DOES NOT have to run a single call in Gwinnett, Hall, Barrow, Florida, Neverland or ANYWHERE other than Jackson County. Stop believing the lies that are being spread. The Jackson County EMS is licensed through the State to operate in Jackson County. They can only go to surrounding counties if that county specifically asked for mutual aid. Since January 2007, Med 3 has been out of Jackson County 45 times only; half of which were for unknown location calls (e.g. a car wreck on the interstate that the caller doesn’t know if they are in Barrow or Jackson County)
Fact: If Med 3 were moved then it might put you a little closer to an ambulance, however the people near the county line on Hwy 53 (both ends), New Liberty Church Road, Tapp Wood Road, Silktree Point, etc would have their ambulance moved further away. I don’t see Jackson County adding any new ambulance stations at the very edge of the county for them, but I bet additional stations built near Traditions and near 332/John B Brooks road will be too far away from them too. (BTW check the EMS Masterplan that shows these locations for the next two ambulance stations)
The issue for the West Jackson area isn’t about station location. It is about the county needing to own up to the fact that the growth occurred over there and it is time to address the vast disparities between what they get versus what they deserve.
Since you seem to have all the answers maybe you can tell me why the county is spending money to give Braselton & Houschton a NEW ems station when you already have "MED 3" established in your area ???? Meanwhile the residence in the outlying areas (hwy 332 area, Traditions & surrounding subdivisions) STILL have NO ems station located in their vacinity!!??
Esentially what you are saying is it is OK to upgrade the EXISTING ems location (in Braselton) while the residences in the outlying areas CONTINUE to go with deminished services. Granted they do have service...but just not as good as what ya'll receive within the city limits of Braselton! For the poor bastards that reside in these outlying areas, if they have a heart attack or need emergency service...they will simply have to hang on for a full 10 minutes until the EMS squad can rush to them from Braselton! For the lucky souls within Braselton...they already receive a quicker response time coming, plus, they will have a nice clean & modern EMS station to compliment their town!!! It's good to live in Braselton isn't it! And it's even better to have a commisioner that also pulls for the CITY of Braselton at the expense of others in his district. Hince my earlier statement regarding praise for Tom Crow! Even though he is not my commisioner...he seems to have more of my & my neighbors interest at heart than Bruce Yates does!!!
Here's a novel idea: Since Braselton ALREADY has an existing EMS statation...instead of spending SPLOST money to give them a NEW facility. Why don't we spend county SPLOST money to establish a new facility that would benefit both Baselton AND the outlying areas. If we had stuck to the ORIGIINAL plan and built this facility at the hwy 60 location this would be the case...is this not correct?? A hwy 60 location could handle calls in both directions and shorten the response times for both areas. Obviously though this is a fact that you will not point out since a new facility within Braselton / Houschton only benifits you! As the saying goes, "location is everything", and you have proven this correct with your biased input for this new facility!
This posses anothe question....exactly why did the plan change? Why was the hwy 60 property even purchased (i.e. more wasted tax payers money). What exactly was the motive for making this change???
Bottom line is...SPLOST money is being spent not to enhance services by adding additional stations...it is being spent to upgrade an existing facility WHICH PROVIDES NO BENEFIT to a significant portion of the people within this distric!!! Master plan or not...how do you explain that Red Head ???? If the roles were reversed and the EMS station was being moved to a location close to hwy 332 / Traditions..leaving Houschton with a significantly DECREASED response time...would you still be singing the same tune??
If SPLOST money is going to be spend - it should be spent to improve / reduce overall response time. A NEW ems station in Braselton DOES NOT accomplish this. I for one would like to know why this is & how it came about. As of now, no one has been able to provide a logical explanation for this. All of your "FACT" rattling sounds impressive, however, all these "FACTS" still do not answer this question nor do they change the response time!!!
Second, from your post it appears that you think that there was supposed to be an additional ambulance IF a station was built out towards Hwy 332/traditions area which is not the case. This would have only moved the existing ambulance 1 mile down the street, not added another ambulance. This is why I put in my last post that we (everyone from Pendergrass to Hoschton to Braselton to Traditions et al) are getting the shaft because we have more population and yet have less resources allocated to us by county government than Commerce, Nicholson, South Jackson, and Plainview.
Third the people in the City of Hoschton and Town of Braselton are the ones with diminished service because while they have just Med 3, we in our area have Med 3 followed by Med 5 followed by Med 2 in a reasonable distance. We also are the area that the next two additional ambulances are coming to while the far end of the West Jackson area is not getting anything else in any existing plan. Contact your county government and ask them about response times in Braselton and Hoschton when Med 3 is not available.
Fourth Why the change in plans from years ago? Because population exploded in the west side of the county over the last decade. Notice how small Bruce Yates's commission seat area is now compared to what it was before. That is based solely on population. Also, fun fact about the politics of the time that Chad Hope wanted the station moved to Hwy 60: Med 3 used to be at the fire station in Hoschton. Chad wanted "his own" station and would have said Hell was a better location than downtown Hoschton to get his way. His plan is now 7 years old, he is no longer the director, and he was forced to resign because be mismanaged EMS so why Tom keeps mentioning what Chad wanted as a basis for anything is rediculous.
Fifth I am willing to have the station stay in Braselton even though it would have been closer to me if moved because I know that the next addition to the ambulance service will be just a stone's throw from my house. It is worth the wait for me to I is that in the future I will have 2 ambulances within 10 miles of my house just like the rest of the county gets now.
Finally, Moving the station would not have improved your response times. As I said in the last post if our ambulance (yours and mine) was moved east it would have picked up more teritory and would be even busier than it is now. So this means that we would be waiting on ambulances from plainview and Jefferson to come to our aid just like we do right now. Like I said in the previous post; it isn't an issue about moving the same ambulance it is about us needing another ambulance.