Lawrence County Commission approved a resolution for the necessity of an EMS levy on the November ballot at its meeting Tuesday.

The resolution, which states the 2-mill levy will be for emergency medical services, was on the commission’s agenda last week. However, the commission held off on approving it to ask the prosecutor’s office if it was possible to amend the wording to include Lawrence County EMS.

On Tuesday, it was announced that the prosecutor’s office wasn’t able to change the wording to include Lawrence County, and the commission went ahead and approved the resolution.

Last week, the commission accepted a petition of 1,953 signatures in order to approve the resolution, which exceeded the necessary percentage of signatures from county voters in last year’s election. Buddy Fry, Lawrence County EMS director, brought up a recent HAZMAT situation in Rome Township Sunday evening, and stated that this is just one reason why countywide EMS is needed.

“These are things that we can’t predict, and that’s further reason, I think, to show a need for public EMS,” Fry said. “You can’t sit down on Jan. 1 and say this is going to happen in June and this bad thing is going to happen in July, and therefore we need X amount of dollars in the budget to cover it. You might go a whole year and nothing happens, but we might have a plane crash next week and expend thousands in resources and costs. Those are things that happen everywhere.”

In other action, the commission:

• Approved the dog warden reports dated May 27 and June 3, 10 and 17, 2017.

• Approved one floodplain permit.

• Approved 14 transfer funds.

• Approved three appropriations.

• Approved and signed the amendment to the Stantec No. 1 Engineering Services Agreement.

• Met in separate executive sessions with county chief deputy auditor Chris Kline regarding Real Estate and personnel; hire, fire, reprimand. No action was taken on either.