Essex-Windsor EMS is getting more paramedics.
During last week's County of Essex budget deliberations, county councillors voted in favour of hiring eight additional full-time paramedics.
Council members also approved the purchase of two new ambulances to support two new 12-hour day shifts.
Chief Justin Lammers says Essex-Windsor EMS is grateful to the County of Essex and county council for supporting the budget.
He says these are some enhancements that will help put more trucks on the road and will also help with the back-end of the business.
"The biggest one that we're excited about is obviously the addition of more paramedics; that's first and foremost," he says. 'We need to keep the ambulances on the frontline and provide support to the team that's already working and out there doing calls. We need to make sure that we're taking care of those medics on the frontlines."
Lammers says the new paramedics are expected to start in June.
"We start in June," says Lammers. "Typically the colleges graduate a large amount of students around that time, so it works out well for us to be able to place these on the road starting in June."
He says Essex-Windsor EMS currently has 300 paramedics and support staff within the organization.
Lammers says the majority of the staff are paramedics.
"We know we're in a position where we need to bring on more paramedics; that's a fact," says Lammers. "We have a masterplan that helps us understand the number. Now we usually look at the metric of how quicker we're able to get to a patient's side, and that's caller response times, and we're not hitting our response times in a couple of key areas."
The budget for Essex-Windsor EMS also includes additional training hours for staff and funding for an HR generalist to support recruitment.
The budget also includes the addition of a Manager of Physical Resources to support infrastructure and equipment readiness and a Community Programs Coordinator, working to expand the usage of Automated External Defibrillators.
The 2026 county budget represents a levy increase of 2.25 per cent, or $5.1 million, which equals approximately $44.02 per home assessed at $350,000.