West bank residents may have to wait for an ambulance to come from Jackson rather than Wilson because of county budget cuts.

Jackson Hole Fire/EMS Chief Rusty Palmer said Station 6 no longer has an ambulance staff after nine emergency medical technicians were placed into a different pay scale.

The reclassification means that those people are working 80 hours every two weeks instead of 96. The reduction in hours leaves the Wilson station without ambulance personnel. Palmer said he cannot replace those 144 man-hours because of a hiring freeze in the county.

“Service will be impacted only because we’re not going to be there as quickly as we have in the past,” Palmer said.

The difference in response times is an additional seven minutes for tips to Teton Village and five to six minutes for trips to Wilson.

The Wilson station was previously staffed with two emergency medical technicians from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. During unstaffed hours, west bank residents were served by the town ambulance.

The employees were reclassified because, in 2004, they were incorrectly placed into a pay category. They have been accidentally working overtime every month for about five years.

By correcting their schedules, the department loses 144 man-hours. Those would cost about $110,000 to $115,000 in salary and benefits to fill, Palmer said.

Palmer said he looked at cutting hours at Station 1 in town, but that was impossible.

“The majority of our calls go out of this station,” he said.

Station 1, on Pearl Avenue, has an ambulance crew 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Wilson station has had an ambulance crew only since 2006, primarily to serve Jackson Hole Mountain Resort and the Teton Village Clinic.

“Realistically, we’ve always had an issue in responding out there to everything before 10 a.m. and after 6 p.m.,” Palmer said. “We’ve never had enough staff to really staff full time out there.”

The station may remain without an ambulance crew for only a month until sales tax figures have been reported for July, August and September. County commissioners will take another look at the hiring freeze in October, Palmer said.

Meanwhile, Palmer said his agency is looking at other options for staffing. That could include hiring people to man the station just during peak hours, using a volunteers or utilizing a combination of paid and volunteer staff.

“At this point in time, our goal is to get it back open as quickly as we can,” he said.

West bank residents and visitors will continue to be served by a volunteer, first-responder network of people who live in the area. Even when an ambulance is called, those volunteers are typically the first people to arrive at the scene with a trauma kit.

“We’re looking at just about every possible way of getting it back open,” Palmer said.