NEW ALBANY —  Ambulance service will shift in New Albany beginning Monday, as a deal has been finalized between the city and a private provider.

Rural Metro Ambulance Services will supply three ambulances to be operated by their own personnel after Mayor Jeff Gahan signed off on the contract earlier this week.

The one ambulance operated by the New Albany Fire Department will be brought off line, and the firefighters who worked it will be reassigned to different roles in the department.

Two ambulances will be on call 24 hours a day, with a third ambulance to serve the city during peak hours. Switching to a private provider has been discussed at length for more than eight months, city officials said.

The process included a fire union vote that backed reassigning the firefighters that worked the public ambulance. With the fire department being in the middle of budget talks in recent years, one reason given by Mayor Jeff Gahan’s administration for ending the city ambulance service was that it could save at least $270,000.

Rural Metro employees will be under the direction of the NAFD administrative staff, and they will live in the fire stations like the firefighters. Essentially Rural Metro will pay the salaries based on revenue collected from fire runs, but the NAFD will still have management authority of the workers.

“We’re excited about the opportunity,” Gahan said Friday. “Obviously there will be a period of time where everybody is getting used to the new service.”

Gahan praised the quality of the NAFD’s ambulance staff, but added New Albany will now have three ambulances to serve the city.

“I’m just happy the employees and firefighters agreed we can improve the service and at the same time save some money for the taxpayers,” he said.

Rural Metro refused to partner with the city on the deal if it meant any firefighters would be dismissed as a result of the contract, NAFD Fire Chief Matt Juliot said.

While the city’s ambulance generated revenue, the cost to staff it kept the service from breaking even and was pretty much supported by the general fund, he continued.

“We’ve been looking into the ambulance program for some time, and we haven’t come to this decision in haste,” Juliot said.

From 2000 to 2009, the city operated two ambulances. But Juliot said there wasn’t an allotted staff budget for the second ambulance, and thus overtime costs stretched to more than $800,000 some years to operate it.

Cutting back to one ambulance saved the city about $480,000 a year, Juliot said. Now Gahan has said eliminating the remaining ambulance could lead to as much as $400,000 in additional savings.

But Juliot said it’s somewhat bittersweet to see the service go.

“We pretty much pioneered fire-based EMS in the state of Indiana,” said Juliot, as he added the NAFD began the program in the 1970s.

Though he admitted he’s biased, Juliot said the department’s ambulance service has been second to none. But it’s not an “apples to apples” comparison when considering what Rural Metro will offer compared to the city’s current program, he continued.

The city has one ambulance, and if it’s in use, the emergency call is sent to Yellow Ambulance. There’s a mutual aid agreement in place with Yellow Ambulance, and they have highly qualified medics as well, Juliot said.

But Yellow Ambulance may be out of the city limits when they are asked to come to New Albany for an emergency, so there could be a longer response time compared to what Rural Metro will be able to offer, he continued.

“It’s not a better service in what we offer in the sense of patient care,” Juliot said. “But I feel our response times will be better for our citizens, and we won’t have to rely on another service that might not be in the city.”

Also, New Albany firefighters will continue to serve as first responders on emergency calls.

There are trained EMTs on all of the city’s fire trucks, which allows them to quickly respond to an emergency, Juliot said. The first responder aspect of the NAFD’s service will not change with the switch in ambulance coverage to Rural Metro, he said.

“The New Albany Fire Department is not getting out of the EMS business, we’re just getting out of the transport part of it,” Juliot said.