The Kanawha County Emergency Ambulance Authority is cutting its budget - and about 20 positions with it, officials say.
The agency is cutting its internal budget by about $1.3 million for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, said Jennifer Herrald, county manager and a member of the agency's board.
The ambulance authority plans to cut the positions by attrition, which means as full and part-time employees leave, they won't be replaced, Herrald and Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said.
Carper said one of the reasons for the cuts is that the ambulance authority is doing fewer medical transport calls.
"It's really simple - the business is down," Carper said. "We're not going to pay people not to take people some place."
The cuts will be made to the ambulance authority's medical transport side, not to those who take emergency calls, Carper said.
Carper said the ambulance authority at one time didn't make medical transport calls. It only started doing those calls so that the county would have extra ambulances in the case of a disaster. Transport calls also are a good way to train staff members, he said.
Carper said the ambulance authority has his full support in blessing to make the cuts.
"It's just one of those things, and we'll deal with it," he said.