As Fire Chief Thomas Joyce prepares to ask Town Meeting for $349,108 to bring the town’s Emergency Medical Services up to new state standards, one of the services founders is arguing  the once independent program should be removed from the department’s control.

Dale Jones, of Marion, helped establish the service in 1976. Since then, he’s served as an on-call department member and as deputy director for many years. He was also a Norton firefighter.

Jones said the ambulance service began to decline after Selectmen merged Marion EMS with the Fire Department.

He protested the decision at a Selectmen meeting  in July 2012. Following the vote, Jones voiced his disapproval and was removed from the meeting by Marion Police Chief Lincoln Miller.

Jones said he is speaking out again,  before the Oct. 28 Special Town Meeting.At the meeting, voters will weigh Joyce’s request for funds to hire more ambulance staff. Ultimately, Jones wants to see the ambulance department reestablished as an agency separate from the Fire department. At the very least, Jones doesn’t want to see the town hire a private contractor for ambulance service. “If we are going to continue to provide service within town, I hope it’s with our own people,” Jones said. “We’ve invested a fortune to train EMTs and paramedics.”

Joyce agrees with Jones on that point.

“That’s not necessarily cheaper and we don’t believe it will give citizens the same level of service,” Joyce said. In June, he asked Selectmen for the funds to hire additional staff. New state regulations have made it impossible to maintain an advanced service license without the staff, Joyce said.

To keep operating under the advanced license, the state’s Office of Emergency Management granted the department a series of extensions, as long as the department makes efforts to improve. Without the license, the town may only offer basic life support service, which limits what treatments are offered.

Joyce said he has made strides toward compliance, but staffing the department requires additional money. The days of relying on on-call emergency responders in town are over, Joyce said.

If approved, the money will be used to hire on-call and part-time EMTs and paramedics to staff the department 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With the current number of staff, Joyce said the department has had to request mutual aid for calls between eight to 12 times a month. The state  has said departments should request mutual aid no more than once or twice a month.

In response to Jones’s call for Marion EMS to operate independently of the department, Joyce said the new regulations made that proposal very difficult to implement.

“The state would have come in and shut [Marion EMS] down,” Joyce said. “If we don’t get this money, and don’t fund the ambulance department the Office of Emergency Management in all likelihood will not renew our license.”

State guidelines require that first responders en-route to an emergency call be on the road in less than a minute after being dispatched.

By combining the departments, Joyce said he would be able to oversee both and provide the ambulance service with a more structured system. Jones contends those changes have not been realized.

Following the merge, Jones said the issue came to a head a few months ago when he responded to a call alone because of a lack of staff. After responding, he asked to be taken off the on-call list and said the ambulance service was fairing poorly over the radio scanner.

Jones said he was placed on administrative leave the next day.

He has since been reinstated and still responds to emergency calls. Jones said he plans to address the issue at Special Town Meeting.

“When I started 37 years ago, I was motivated because I lived in a community where my father had a heart attack and the service showed up without the proper equipment,” Jones said. “From then on, I promised to make sure the ambulance service in the town where I lived would be prepared to respond.”