However, the city has made a change to give the county more chance for input on ambulance matters, Farbridge said Tuesday.

While other delegations appearing before the city council committee that now handles ambulance matters have a five-minute time limit, the limit is being waived for the county, she said.

In a letter last week to Farbridge, County Warden Joanne Ross-Zuj asked the city to reconsider the decision made in late January to dissolve the land ambulance committee, which had representatives from both city and county councils and reported to city council.

“As you know, land ambulance service is of critical importance throughout Guelph- Wellington,” Ross-Zuj said in the letter. “It is of even greater importance in the more rural sections of Wellington County, where hospitals are often not in close proximity to someone in need,” she said.

“Land ambulances are considered by the rural population as their link to comprehensive medical treatment in times of emergency. Therefore, direct input into how the service is provided and funded is of concern for local and county councillors,” Ross-Zuj wrote.

City council decided in January to dissolve the joint land ambulance committee and have ambulance issues go instead to the city’s emergency services, community services and operations committee, which is chaired this year by Coun. Ian Findlay. At the same time, council decided to withdraw from the joint city-county social services committee, which reported to the county.

County council delivers social services for Guelph-Wellington, while city council delivers land ambulance services in the city and county.

The city has had this responsibility since the province downloaded ambulance service to municipalities in 2000. Royal City Ambulance, a privately owned business, operated the ambulance service until January 2009, when the city started direct delivery of ambulance service.

“There is a lack of understanding in the community about this service,” Farbridge said in an interview.

Partly for this reason, she said, city hall issued a detailed backgrounder on the ambulance service on March 3, which can be viewed at the city’s website.

Another reason for issuing the bulletin was to give a “good grounding” in the ambulance service and its history to city councillors on the emergency services, community services and operations committee, who haven’t handled ambulance issues before, she said.

Among other things, the backgrounder says average response times for ambulances in Guelph-Wellington have improved in recent years, while calls for ambulance service have been on the increase since 2006. Calls increased by 26.9% in 2007 and by a further 38% in 2008, it says. There were 47,262 calls for ambulance service in Guelph-Wellington in 2008.