Jill Schramm/MDN Ward County Veterans Services Director Bradley Starnes stands next to the Veterans Administration van used to provide transportation to medical care for veterans. The van has been idle with no volunteers to drive the van.

Ward County veterans needing medical transportation are no longer able to count on a service that had been there for them for a number of years. A lack of volunteer drivers has sidelined the county’s Veterans Administration van.

“We’re having trouble getting volunteers to participate in the program to help veterans get to their appointments,” Ward County Veterans Services Director Bradley Starnes told the Ward County Commission Thursday.

A regular volunteer retired, which led to a situation in 2023 in which no volunteer drivers are available. The van that used to make five or six trips a month to transport veterans to medical appointments now sits idle. The van can be used only for trips to the VA facility in Fargo, to a VA-contracted facility, such as the Minot VA clinic, and for VA referrals to non-VA facilities.

Starnes said his office has been advertising for drivers and has had interest but no one willing to sign up.

“It’s awfully hard to get somebody to volunteer to drive to Fargo, stay overnight, without compensation, and the people that are willing to do it aren’t meeting the requirements,” he said.

Qualifications include holding a regular driver’s license and being willing to attend a one-week training course in Fargo. However, another qualification is to be up to date with COVID-19 vaccination. Some who inquired about volunteering have had the vaccine but weren’t current with the latest boosters, Starnes said.

“We’ve had a lot of pushback,” Starnes said of the vaccination requirement.

“I know we would have had four or five drivers if it was not for the vaccine mandate,” he said. “We have had several people say that they would volunteer. They get interested and then we start talking to them about it and the vaccine gets brought up and then that’s the end of that.”

He added he is not able to get a waiver on the vaccine requirement because it is a national mandate.

Starnes asked the commission to consider a stipend as a recruiting tool for volunteers, who now only receive reimbursement for any lodging and meals on the Fargo trips. According to the Disabled American Veterans, a few North Dakota counties provide stipends, he said.

DAV had donated vans to the Veterans Administration to provide medical transportation in North Dakota. Starnes said the Fargo VA told him it is not authorized to provide monetary compensation to drivers within the nationally-based volunteer program.

Ward commissioners were reluctant to fund volunteer stipends.

“To me, it’s an obligation to our veterans that should be met by our federal government,” Commissioner Jim Rostad said.

The commission voted to draft a resolution and letter to the state’s congressional delegation, urging that the matter of transportation funding and staffing be addressed at the federal level. The county also will check with Mountrail County, which at one time participated in Ward County’s veterans transportation, about support for a resolution.

Because the wheels of government can turn slowly, the Veterans Service Office is looking to the community for any help in the meantime. The commission directed Starnes to continue talks begun with Minot Air Force Base officials about recruiting volunteer drivers from active-duty personnel.