Tracking effort helping to boost Shaler-Hampton EMS response times

Hampton Council met Sept. 24 to vote on agenda items and garner updates from each department.

Eric Schmidt, executive director and chief of Shaler-Hampton EMS, offered some positive notes on response times to calls in the area.

“We’ve seen great improvement in our response times since we started tracking it a while back,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt shared that with roughly 500 calls per month, only eight were outside the standard two- to three-minute response time expected. Four of the outliers had legitimate interference.

Now that the EMS is tracking its own progress, the department has begun displaying slides on its social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram to share the information with residents.

“We have an employee with a degree in graphic design so she has offered to create the slides for us,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt didn’t report all positive news.

“Sadly, Celebration Villa Retirement Community will be closing on Oct. 15. We run quite a few calls out of there, so it is a bit sad to see it go,” Schmidt said.

Celebration Villa is located at 2224 Walters Road in Hampton.

Additionally, council approved a request for $28,031 by Councilwoman Julie Fritsch for the Department of Community Services to purchase new furniture in the vestibule of the community center.

“We had budgeted $35,000 from the capital improvements fund budget, but this is sort of a continuation of the project that was done last year in the gathering area,” Fritsch said.

Updates on environmental services and the construction of the new sewage treatment plant were overall promising despite some minor finishings.

Chris Lochner, former township manager and current lead on construction of the new sewage treatment plant, provided an update on the work.

“The demolition should be completed by the end of 2025, and the construction should be completed by the end of the calendar year,” Lochner said.

Although Lochner retired from the municipal manager position in 2024, he agreed to stay on as the project manager because of how deeply invested he is in the completion of the complicated building.

Hampton Council’s next regular meeting will be at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22.

Upcoming events

The annual Halloween Parade for children 10 and younger will be from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25, at Hampton Community Park. The park will be closed to the general public for the day. Registration for the parade closes Oct. 17, and no walk-ins will be accepted. Activities will include a haunted hayride, a Build-A-Bear raffle and photo booth. Township police officers, firefighters and medics will participate. To register, visit hampton-pa.org/302/Halloween-Event-Parade.

The Depreciation Lands Museum at 4743 S. Pioneer Road will offer lantern tours Oct. 18 and 25. Everyone is welcome.