(KAIR)--The Atchison City Commission, during a meeting Monday afternoon, agreed to ask Atchison County officials to reconsider the location of the new county wide EMS facility.

Atchison City Manager Trey Cocking said the city's primary concern was the possibility of increased response times from the new location. “With the current proposed EMS station, only 1,700 people are covered within a five minute response time, and that compares to 6,116 people that are covered within five minutes...so that's going from 36 percent of the county residents covered in a five minute response time, to only 10 percent of the county residents covered in a five minute response time.”

County Commission Chair Bill Pohl was present at the meeting, and said the county considered numerous locations over the past few years prior to purchasing the property just outside the city limits.

There was some confusion in earlier discussion between the city and county, with Pohl saying that he was told of an offer from the city regarding the facility’s location. He says that “Commissioner Bodenhausen came to me and said that the city would be willing to give us a one time $100,000 sales tax payment if we looked to the west side of the city to build the EMS building, and they house a firetruck out there...I am just going on what I was told.”

Cocking denies the offer. He says “some erroneous information that they had heard either through sources...or got some information wrong, but things I had never heard before. The city had never committed to putting $100,000 towards either one of these projects. We never had discussions about that sort of effort. So I was really shocked when I heard that last night. We really need to work together.”

Pohl says that when the contract with Techs Inc., the company that provides EMS service to the County comes up for renewal, it may be renewed, or the county may decide to take over operations. At that point, Pohl says the County Commission would be more than willing to discuss the possibility of working with the city to place the service at the City Fire Station. Cocking says the city is willing to have that discussion.