Approve Paid Personnel
The Springs Fire District has put $100,000 in next year’s budget for a paid provider to respond to emergency medical calls and will seek the advice of consultants to create a program that fits the community’s needs.
Springs, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary, is the last district on the South Fork to integrate paid responders into the volunteer emergency medical system. The Fire Department, which provides ambulance services, has been struggling to answer alarms, mostly during the day when volunteers are working outside the mainly bedroom community.
“They’re not showing up during the day‚ and we know there’s a problem with it,” Patrick Glennon, the chairman of the board of fire commissioners, said at a hearing on the district’s 2016 budget of just over $1 million on Tuesday. The increase is $7,463 over 2015.
Officials in districts with ambulance agencies that border Springs had raised concerns about the number of calls Springs needed help answering during the last year, a reported 26 percent. The district’s commissioners had been resistant to hiring paid personnel, given generally low call volume and concern about raising taxes in an area that already struggles with the highest school taxes in the Town of East Hampton.
Although the commissioners have put $100,000 in the budget for a paid program, decisions remain about what shape it will take. They may opt to hire only emergency medical technicians, who provide basic life support, instead of advanced emergency medical technicians, such as paramedics, whom other districts on the South Fork have hired. The difference in pay is $5 to $7 per hour, Mr. Glennon said. The district has not, however, budgeted for a paid-responder’s vehicle, which means technicians may have to wait for a volunteer to drive the district’s ambulance.
The Montauk Fire District, which started its program in 2013, budgeted $227,000 for the upcoming year. The Amagansett Fire District budgeted about $243,000 for a 24/7 program in 2015.
Mr. Glennon said the program is not likely to be offered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which it is in Amagansett, Montauk, and East Hampton Village. “We’re going to look at it and see what we can come up with that’s most beneficial to the department,” he said.
The chairman, who has been an advanced life support provider for 15 years, said he was not convinced that a higher level of certification, and the ability to do more, is always best for patients. Only basic life support is necessary on a majority of calls, he said.
“The paramedic level is in my opinion a dangerous level . . . they believe they are almost a doctor and that is scary,” he said, adding that he had seen instances when providers stayed on scene longer than necessary, trying to prove their skills, “not because it was right for the patient, but because they can.”
The commissioners, who are considering hiring a firm to set up and run the program, plan to meet as early as next week with consultants that specialize in setting up such programs. The commissioners said they weren’t sure yet how much that would cost, although a representative from E5 Support Services, an L.L.C. based in Queensbury, N.Y., has agreed to visit Springs to make a presentation for the cost of only a hotel room for the night. There apparently is also the possibility of hiring a provider who is in the department, although an outside contractor would be hired to pay the provider in that case.
In the budget the district initially submitted to the East Hampton town clerk on Sept. 28, funding for the program was not included. However, at its meeting on Oct. 12, the commissioners amended the budget, voting to take $100,000 earmarked for its building and equipment reserve funds for the program and to lower the overall budget by $500 to stay under the state’s mandated cap on tax increases.
“It’s a dangerous thing,” Mr. Glennon said of the result, which meant adding only $15,000 in each reserve fund. As of September, there is $329,419 in the equipment reserve fund and $151,229 in the building reserve fund, Mr. Glennon said. He noted that the district’s two ambulances are 11 and 13 years old and will cost $180,000 to $250,000 each to replace. “We have aging equipment for the ambulances. We have to buy new LIFEPAKs,” he said of the monitors also used to defibrillate patients in cardiac arrest. “They’re $37,000 apiece.”
The fire district’s budget has remained relatively flat in recent years. Chris Harmon, a commissioner, said adding $100,000 to the budget would have meant a $20 increase in taxes per house, on average. “There’s people down here living on clams — not as many as there was — but there’s still people living on clams and fish,” he said.
The bottom line, the commissioners said, is that they remain concerned that the program could end up costing taxpayers a lot of money in the long run. “We’re not going to jump and raise the taxes,” Mr. Glennon said. If they find the amount allotted isn’t enough, the board will ask for a vote next June, he said. “If the people of Springs want their taxes raised, we’re going to have them come here,” Mr. Glennon said. “We don’t want to just go ahead and do it.”
Even with decisions yet to be made, the district intends to have a program in place by the first half of 2016. “There’s something going to be done before the season,” said Mike Benton, a commissioner who also volunteers as an E.M.T.