FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – Fort Wayne’s ambulance service will stay with the Three Rivers Ambulance Authority. The Fort Wayne Fire Department and TRAA announced a compromise plan Thursday.

“This is a reasonable compromise for what we are trying to accomplish,” fire chief Eric Lahey, said. “Our goal has always been making a significant improvement in the delivery of care at no extra cost to the citizens.”

Starting in January, the fire department will start having a paramedic on the engines to provide more advanced medical care at the scene before the TRAA paramedics arrive. To cover the cost of that change, the department said it needed to acquire the entire ambulance service.

“Putting advanced life support (ALS) on every engine comes at a cost. In order to recoup those costs, we have to absorb the entire system. We cannot get revenue from delivering ALS care. You have to transport the patient in the eyes of Medicare and Medicaid and insurances providers to collect revenue, Lahey explained.

Now, under the new agreement, TRAA will cover the costs of equipping the engines, training the firefighters and staffing the engines with ALS level of care. Lahey said that will be about $400,000 a year and will come out of TRAA’s reserve fund, which currently has around $5 million in it. The agreement is for three years and either side has to give two-year’s notice if they want to end it. That means it will last for at least five years.

“The reserves will be replenished through revenue streams,” Lahey said. “There are also controls in place that if at any point the reserves aren’t being kept where they should be, we can dissolve the agreement.”

Swenson said the Latham engineering firm C.T. Male Associates will determine the “parameters” of the asbestos inside the building. Once that is done, the city will seek bids for its removal.

Swenson said this week he was uncertain how long the asbestos study would take to complete. Once the asbestos is removed, the study will focus on the structural condition of the building, Swenson said.

Swenson has said that C.T. Male will be paid $52,850 for the studies, including a structural report that’s expected to be completed by May 2017. Additional money will be spent to pay a monitor to oversee the removal of asbestos in the building.

The city’s hiring of C.T. Male follows a report earlier this year by Peak Engineering that said steel reinforcements in the firehouse’s concrete floor, where fire trucks are parked, have probably deteriorated significantly.

“This investigation revealed a unique reinforcement layout that is not consistent with conventional practices,” the report said.

The report said a section of the slab concrete was “saw-cut and chipped out,” revealing that some steel was missing.

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