Mutual Aid EMS leaving Latrobe site for Arnold Palmer airport, Derry Township

After failing to reach a new lease agreement, Mutual Aid EMS is moving out of the Latrobe municipal building to two existing stations a few miles away at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Unity and a second site in Derry Township.

According to city manager Terry Carcella, the nonprofit ambulance service signed a 20-year lease for space in Latrobe’s municipal building on Jefferson Street in the 1980s. The lease was extended multiple times and ultimately expired in 2015. He discovered the paperwork when looking through contracts upon taking the job with the city last year.

Carcella said Mutual Aid was paying $525 a month plus utilities, but the city had not collected the utility contribution for a number of years.

“I wasn’t going back to collect that money,” Carcella said. “I just wanted a new contract moving forward based on the rent rates today, rather than the rents back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, which the contract was based on.”

He said he had multiple discussions with Mutual Aid directors about a new lease agreement, with his rent proposal beginning at $2,600 per month and later whittled to $2,200 per month, including utilities, but negotiations failed.

“I don’t mind supporting (Mutual Aid). They do need support. We have to have a good ambulance service, and everybody in the ambulance business needs more support,” Carcella said. “But it was just really the city of Latrobe residents that were supporting them rather than everybody.”

Mutual Aid CEO Gene Komondor said the company will continue to serve the city, just from farther away. The airport site is less than 4 miles from the municipal building. The location in Derry Township is about 6 miles away.

“After a 25-year relationship … we have been unable to come to an agreement on rent costs that we pay to the city that would have allowed Mutual Aid to remain in its location there,” Komondor said. “We understand the economic challenges that all agencies and organizations are dealing with currently. We had hoped to come to an agreement that would have allowed Mutual Aid to continue to serve the residents of Latrobe from a location in the city. Unfortunately, we were not able to do so.”

The relocation of two ambulances, a kitchen and office space will take effect April 30. Mutual Aid crews have begun to transfer equipment to the other stations.

“This situation does not impact the membership plans that Latrobe residents have with Mutual Aid,” Komondor said.

Carcella said city officials are planning to use the vacant space in the municipal building to expand the police department offices and evidence room.

Before the agreement with Mutual Aid was severed, city officials were planning to restructure the building, a process that would have cost taxpayers up to $200,000.

“It worked out for the city by going in that direction,” Carcella said.