At a special meeting held Thursday, Feb. 5, the Rotterdam Town Board unanimously voted to stay with Rotterdam EMS instead of entering into a contract with privately run Mohawk Ambulance Service.
The people in our community are happy with what we have. They trust the service that Rotterdam EMS and Rotterdam Ambulance has provided over the years, said Supervisor Steven Tommasone.
This year, the $100,000 or more needed to fund the service will come from the town’s budget.
`I went to department heads and asked them to assist me in coming up with some funding for Rotterdam EMS, and through several departments, mostly through the police department and Chief [James J.] Hamilton, the planning department and our attorneys in the legal department, we were able to put together about $65,000 worth of transfers,` said Tommasone.
According to Joe Vanderworker, president of the board of directors for Rotterdam EMS, the Town Board and Rotterdam EMS are still looking at ways to come up with the rest of the funding. Estimates for the cost of the service range from $100,000 to $120,000.
`He’s got the numbers in his head,` said Vanderworker of Tommasone.
In subsequent years, Rotterdam will fund the EMS service by creating a special taxing district. Tommasone could not provide a specific cost to taxpayers, but said it would be minimal.
`It’s an essential service. It’s like the essential service of having water come into your home,` said Tommasone.
Several weeks ago, the Town of Rotterdam rejected a proposal made by Mohawk Ambulance to provide emergency services to the town.
`The proposal would dedicate one ambulance to the town. We would, of course, if that ambulance was being used, move another one into the town,` said Chris Bombardier of Mohawk Ambulance.
He said that Mohawk Ambulance would have provided the service to the town with no charge to taxpayers.
`We bill for the service, but so does Rotterdam EMS. It’s the exact same situation [as Rotterdam EMS], but we would never ask the town for a subsidy, and we certainly wouldn’t be looking at a taxing district,` said Bombardier.
He said that another important piece of the deal was that Rotterdam would keep their paramedic services and they would reimburse the town for the use of their paramedics since they would be the ones serving the Town of Rotterdam.
He also noted that, based on the call numbers the Town of Rotterdam has, Mohawk Ambulance would be giving back to the town close to $100,000 a year.
`They spent $455,000 on their paramedic service last year so we would be subsidizing nearly a fourth of that,` said Bombardier.
In response, Tommasone said, `There’s no such thing as a free lunch. I want to see how it is on a call — how they’re going to save someone money. They have to make profit. They’re going to go out and they’re going to charge for a call.`
He said that Rotterdam EMS has 2,500 calls a year, and he believes `leaving it up to happenstance is not good.`
`We need to have austerity. I believe our paramedics and our volunteer fire districts and those individuals who are involved everyday in those two parts of our emergency services in the town all tell me the same thing,` said Tommasone. `I have not heard from any one of them that they believe it would be better to go private, and whose words should I take? The words of politicians and people who frankly want to make money, or those people who are delivering services and have for decades in our community? I’m going to go with the people who have served in our communities for decades.`
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