John Coffelt, Editor

The Coffee County Ambulance Authority unanimously approved during the Jan. 15 meeting to contract with the medical service provider for Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival and provide standby ambulances for transports from the 2026 festival.

Coffee County EMS director Michael Bonner said that current staffing is sufficient enough to provide the service again this year. The service returned to providing standby ambulances for Bonnaroo in 2024 after declining to in 2023 due to staffing problems.

 National Event Services (NES) handles onsite medical services for the festival. NES’s onsite medical staff work in premiere mobile medical facilities. The county personnel remain on the edge of the Bonnaroo property to transport patients that need care beyond what can be offered onsite.  

Overtime is paid to county employees from NES, not from Bonnaroo.

“Obviously, I would confirm that we would do it like we’ve always done it,” Bonner said in 2024. “We bill NES, he cuts me a check and what he works out with Bonnaroo is between him and Bonnaroo.”

During Bonner’s report presented during last week’s meeting, he said that the staffing situation was looking better than in previous years.

“Staffing looks a lot better,” he said. “Over the last 13 months you can see that staffing is looking a lot better. We are making good progress at having five trucks every day.” 

One area of concern in the future related to staffing is that a large number of services west of Coffee County have employee schedules with more days off. While Coffee County retains the older 24 hours on, 48 off, many services have moved to a 24 on, 72 off schedule.   

According to Bonner, calls were down from last year. There were 10,976 responses in 2025, down from 11,487 in 2024.    

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.