Springs Considers Paid E.M.S.
Grappling with how to balance increased need for emergency medical services with the costs, the Springs Board of Fire Commissioners is seriously considering a paid program to supplement its volunteer ambulance crew, particularly during daytime. Word that the board was going to come up with a solution followed a closed-door session Monday night. Every district on the South Fork except Springs has a paid provider on duty at least 12 hours a day.
“We know there’s an issue there, and we’re looking to resolve it,” Pat Glennon, the chairman of the commissioners’ board, said on Tuesday. The issue to be resolved is that the Springs Fire Department has been unable to answer a number of E.M.S. calls.
Figures provided by the East Hampton Village Communications Department, whose personnel dispatch Springs calls, indicate that it needed help from outside districts about 26 percent of the time in order to answer 441 calls from July 1, 2014, to July 1 of this year. Mr. Glennon disputed these statistics. Still, he said, there had been a call when a mutual aid request was sent to every disrict in East Hampton Town before Springs was able to pick it up.
“I listen to my pager, I get it,” Mr. Glennon said. A volunteer who is an advanced life support provider, he said that before the recession his construction business had several employees, which made it possible for him to leave more often. “I was Johnny on the spot. I could say to the guys, ‘See you in two hours.’ Now, most of us can’t do that,” he said.
“I know there’s a problem. It’s just the cost, and the idea of saying it has to be a paramedic for 3 or 5 percent of the calls,” which would require that level of care. “To pay $25 an hour to pay someone to sit around?”
“We’re a very poor district,” Chris Harmon, one of the commissioners, said, in comparison to neighboring districts like East Hampton and Amagansett, which added paid providers about a year and a half ago. School taxes in Springs are already high, he said. “We’re trying to be very creative about this and not hit the taxpayers over the head.”
The five commissioners discussed their differing stances in the closed work session Monday night, which Mr. Glennon said was a private work session allowed under state fire district law. The Open Meetings Law, however, specifies that public bodies can meet in executive session only to discuss personnel, litigation, contract negotiations, and some real estate deals.
Yesterday, Leander Arnold, a commissioner, called a public vote a possibility. “We’re definitely going to need something to help us . . . fill the gap,” he said. Along with Mr. Harmon and Mr. Glennon, he said the closed-door session was necessary so they could “hash everything out.” No decisions were made, he said.
In Mr. Harmon’s opinion the board will ultimately create “perhaps, a basic life support position. . . . We will have people in that firehouse at least 12 hours a day,” he said.
The commissioners’ next regular meeting is Oct. 12 at 6:30 p.m., but its 2016 budget is due to be submitted to the town clerk by Oct. 1.
Mr. Glennon said the board plans to go to a Springs Citizens Advisory Committee meeting next month to let the community know what it has decided. A hearing will be held on the budget on Oct. 20, and the public will be able to comment on it then.