DARLINGTON — For the next meeting of the Lafayette County Board of Supervisors, slated for Oct. 21, there will likely be two dominant items on the agenda. The first being an update on the 2026 budget, which will need to be passed next month.

The second will be about county buildings. The meeting will likely decide the fate of the former Memorial Hospital building (see related story) and will also be a chance for the full board to talk about the proposed study for Lafayette County EMS, to not only see what they would need to operate for the next decades, but also where.

Last Friday, the EMS Committee met, and voted to move forward to the full board plans for a facility study which would take place over the next months for the service.

At a meeting where EMS Director Shawn Phillips announced that the service passed the 30 person membership threshold for the first time since it was formed five years ago, the agency was growing, but still dealing with staffing, as it continues to have to decline approximately half of its patient transfer requests.

Wanting the EMS Service to be on a good foundation, Phillips said he wanted to move forward with the EMS facility study.

Phillips had gotten proposals from three different firms about coming up with plans for the facility study.

Delta 3 Engineering of Platteville was one of the firms contacted. Their proposal was to look at the size of the station the EMS would need, primarily creating a blueprint for a new building.

Keller Associates was the next firm contacted. Their approach to the facility was similar to Delta 3, coming up with detailed plans for a new building support the future of the service.

Phillips’s preferred choice was from Five Bugles, which was the most expensive of the three options. Five Bugles had two portions of the study the other two did not — to review the calls and population density to try and determine the best place for a new station to be located in, and to detail the deficiencies of the current station, which Phillips said would be helpful in applying for grant funding to help cover the costs.

Phillips said that no project could move forward without substantial funding through grants and donations, and pointed to the Laona Rescue Squad, which got the bulk of a new station paid for through grants — $2 million from USDA, and $2.8 million from the State of Wisconsin.

Several projects locally received roughly half their funding through federal grants, including the ongoing Platteville Firehouse project, and the Lancaster Fire and EMS facility getting updates for their 29-year-old facility.

Phillips pointed to Five Bugles, which worked on the Platteville project, for the study for Watertown, which looked at service maps, including potential changes, to come up with six locations for possible building locations.

“Although its expensive, it gives us way more data,” Phillips said of the $27,000 price tag. “It would make our grant funding a lot stronger.”

Both the Keller and Five Bugles proposal, a construction manager for the project would be lined up with the studies. For Keller, they have construction manager services available in-house.

For Five Bugles, they align with Kraemer Bros Construction, which is the setup of the Platteville project.

After the meeting, Phillips said that the county would not have an agreement with Kraemer, and there would not be any fiscal penalty for the county if they looked at others.

A construction manager role is a consultant service, therefore it does not fall under request for bids for government projects.

Construction managers are being used in a number government projects, as the firms hired often review bids for projects, making sure contractors’s bid thoroughly, and oversee the project.

Many construction managers also are construction firms, so they often bid on portions of the project, as opposed to a general contractor, who would bid on the overall project.

Supervisor Lee Gill noted the hierarchy of the building needs the county has in the coming years. Stating the top priority is to look at the future of Lafayette Manor, the county also has the “elephant in the room” of deciding the fate of the former hospital building, and also has been talking for the past few years about the sheriff’s office/jail.

Committee Chair Bob Boyle noted they have a lot of moving pieces on buildings.

The committee decided to move the issue forward to the full county board.

Earlier in the meeting, Phillips stated that the cardiac monitor program, that allowed EMS services to lease monitors, was placed on pause, as the company that offered the program just released a new monitor.

At the beginning of the meeting, fellow Lafayette County Supervisor Emmett Reilly questioned the timing of the meeting, being held at 7:30 a.m. last Friday, believing got time of day made the ability of people to attend inhibiting for members of the public.

Reilly also wondered about having the meeting in a different location than the EMS Building, noting he brought his cane because he worked about falling coming to the meeting.

“I can walk in here and see you need changes,” Reilly said.

Committee member Lee Gill stated that having the meetings open and available for the public is important. “Transparency is important,” Gill replied to Reilly.

Committee Chair Bob Boyle said that for special topics, they have had the meetings in other places, and if there was a request to move the meeting, they would try and honor such a request.

The meetings, held at the EMS station, are primarily done so because it is also the offices of the service, and the location for information and staff to be able to respond to questions for the meeting.