East Hampton Village is seeking to formalize its relationship with the East Hampton Ambulance Association with code changes that could be implemented by January, but those changes will not affect how the ambulance service operates, Mayor Jerry Larsen said this week.
He said there is “no formal contract” between the association and the village, and that the village attorney, Vincent Messina, was “working on legislation to put the ambulance, Fire Department, and Police Department in the village code.”
On Sept. 27, East Hampton ambulance volunteers were sent emails inviting them to meet and speak with the mayor about the association and ways it might run more efficiently.
“I put out an email to everyone to set up meetings so I could talk to them directly, put rumors to rest, and give them the truth. We heard we were trying to eliminate volunteers, that we’re trying to make the ambulance corps fully paid, and none of that was true. What we’re trying to do is get more personnel so we can reduce response time,” Mr. Larsen said in a phone call. “That’s always been my goal.”
“I understand how hard it is to be a volunteer,” he added. “I was on call 24/7 for 30 years. I know what it’s like to be called from family functions on a call. Our goal is to assist the association, and ultimately to provide the best service we can. I have the greatest respect for the volunteers. We couldn’t operate without them.”
Ann Grabowski, the current chief of the ambulance association, said patient care is what’s important to volunteers. “We volunteer all our hours for the patient. You want to help your community.”
Her father, Vincent Grabowski, was a charter member of the association. “His pager would go off and he’d run out of the house. That’s where I got the perspective to become a volunteer. It’s in our blood,” she said. Ms. Grabowski has been volunteering for the association for 32 years.
The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association is an independent nonprofit corporation with its own bylaws. Its relationship to the village is unique, and complex. Since the 1970s, ambulance calls have been answered by volunteers, but since 2013, paid paramedics have also played a role. In June, the village also brought on some paid emergency medical technicians.
The volunteers answer to Ms. Grabowski. Paid ambulance workers -- paramedics and E.M.T.s -- answer to Village Police Chief Michael Tracey. According to Mayor Larsen, the ambulance chief answers to the village board.
Chiefs are elected for one-year terms at a November meeting. Ms. Grabowski said it is widely expected that Mary Mott, a volunteer for 40 years, will be elected at the association’s next meeting. She is running unopposed.
The paid E.M.T. program, which the village hoped would reduce call times and the need for mutual aid calls in which a neighboring department responds, proved to be controversial with some volunteers this summer.
“We heard a need for paid E.M.T.s,” said Marcos Baladron, the village administrator, over the phone. “We weren’t getting people to respond to calls, and we have more calls now than ever. Some viewed the paid E.M.T.s as an insult, but nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “The bottom line,” said Mr. Baladron, “is that the village is responsible for the quality of the ambulance service. They’re a volunteer group, but those are our ambulances, all paid for by village taxpayers.”
It all came to a head in August, when Randy Hoffman, a critical care E.M.T. who had volunteered for the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association since 2006, was suspended for a month by the association for creating what was referred to as “hostile work environment” after making comments about the new program to a paid E.M.T.
Mr. Hoffman shared his side of the story on his Facebook account, saying that he had told the E.M.T. he thought the volunteers were able to handle the call volume on their own.
Mr. Hoffman, who was reinstated as a volunteer in early September, chose to switch his status from active member to “exempt.”
“I was told I couldn’t run advanced lifesaving calls by myself and that I had to go with someone else,” Mr. Hoffman said this week. “But what if I get called for a basic lifesaving call that turns into an advanced lifesaving call? Am I going to run it by myself? No one could answer that, so I went exempt.”
Ms. Grabowski said that “we want to be included in the meshing of the paid and volunteer ambulance workers. Cohesiveness is what we want,” she added. “You need to be able to trust someone when you’re in a van with them driving 80 miles per hour.”
Mayor Larsen highlighted that “all ambulance members and fire department members are considered employees of the village for insurance purposes, for coverage under workman’s compensation. If the village decides on rules and procedures for those departments, they will have to comply with them as well.”
But the law doesn’t make that clear. Chapter 18 of the current village code, which pertains to the Code of Ethics, states that “no person shall be deemed to be a municipal officer or employee solely by reason of being a volunteer fireman or ambulance association volunteer, except a chief or assistant chief.”
Mayor Larsen stressed that “New York State law lays out how villages interact with their fire departments. Our fire department follows that law word for word. Nothing in the state law addresses ambulance services. That’s up to each village individually. A lot of people don’t realize the ambulance is a volunteer organization. It only works because they’re so darned dedicated. We run more calls than any other department on the East End. We should have the membership to match that volume.”
To that end, the village plans to hire a professional to make a recruitment video, put it on social media, and hope it drives interest for some new volunteers.
“We’d love more volunteers who could join our group,” said Ms. Grabowski. “We’ve had a nice influx of Latino volunteers recently, which has been a really big help since they’re a growing segment of our community. Volunteering is very rewarding.”
“In the past, we rarely had to go to the village for anything,” she added.
The association has been run by its bylaws for decades, and it’s not clear if having the ambulance service tied into the village code would change the those bylaws, or if the association would continue to exist as a standalone organization contracting with the village.
“We don’t know how that might affect us,” Ms. Grabowski noted.