Mayor Jerry Larsen and the East Hampton Village Board finally got what they wanted: control of the operations of the East Hampton Village Ambulance via a newly created Department of Emergency Medical Service that was voted into existence at Friday’s village board meeting.
The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association has operated since 1975 as an independent nonprofit with its own bylaws and chain of command. That chain of command will now include the mayor and village board, which will act as the board of commissioners for the new department.
In a four-page advertisement in last week’s paper, Mayor Larsen said the impetus for the change was his concern that ambulance response times were too long and that the ambulance association was not held accountable because its officers were not selected by residents. “Accountability will equal faster response times,” he wrote.
In the new department, volunteers and paid members will work under the same chief. This is a change that the village hopes will ease what has been, at times, a strained relationship between paid and volunteer crew members. Paid members previously had answered to the chief of police while the volunteers answered to their elected chief.
In May, the village will introduce a new position, fire and emergency medical services administrator, to help the chiefs oversee their departments.
The proposed legislation produced an outcry at the first public hearing in March from ambulance volunteers who said that after decades of service they were being robbed of their ability to elect their own chiefs. Post-hearing, the village conceded and changed the legislation, allowing the volunteers to continue to elect their own officers, instead of having them appointed by the village. That said, according to the legislation, the officers will be subject to approval of the village board.
That concession wasn’t enough to tamp down all of the criticism. While it was shorter and less acrimonious than the first hearing, Friday’s meeting made plain that the volunteers who left the ambulance service weren’t coming back any time soon, despite entreaties by the village board.
Amanda Thompson, a current volunteer, who ran 170 calls for the ambulance association in 2022, started things off by handing the trustees a letter in support of the volunteer workers signed by 319 village residents. The last sentence of the letter read, “I am opposed to the proposed new legislation and ask that the Village of East Hampton continue its current form of emergency medical services.”
“I do look forward to serving as an E.M.T.,” she told the board, “but I’d like to point out this time last year we had 45 members and now we’re down to 25. I do believe it’s directly related to this board and the way this transition happened. It could have happened better.” She had concerns about the village’s recruitment drive, how it would get new members up to speed, and how the village planned to pay for new paid members.
Teresa Lawler, with decades of experience in the ambulance association, said she wasn’t there to talk. Instead, she presented the board with a painting she made of a broken heart and hung it next to the stage.
“I’ve been a village resident all my life. I worked with the village Police Department for 35 years, retired, and am a 60-year active member of the fire department,” said Ken Brown. “I’ve been through a lot of ambulance calls when volunteer members show up on the scene, and they know the patients and the patients know them. It’s a big deal. It makes the situation a lot better. What’s happened to the ambulance association in East Hampton is a disgrace, and they should be put back the way they were. If you feel they need more supervision, do it correctly.”
All told, 12 audience members spoke out against creating the new department and no one from the public spoke in favor.
After the board heard from the public, Carrie Doyle, a village trustee, offered gratitude to the volunteers. She remembered the dark days of Covid and wiping off groceries outside her house. “In our darkest days, our first responders were our light,” she said. The village dispatch is “the concierge to the emergency situation,” she said and all they want to tell people on the other end of the line is “help is on the way.”
“I’m very sorry this was not handled better,” she said, adding that the law was not about gaining paid employees, nor was it about charging for rides. “And we need to do better to make you understand that.”
“There’s not a volunteer in this room who has not been invited to stay. Nothing is going to change in the volunteer’s life,” said Mayor Larsen.
“Where I stand as a village trustee,” said Sara Amaden, “looking at the budget and insurance and the liability, I believe we cannot have liability without responsibility.” She said a hybrid model with a one-to-three ratio of paid to volunteer ambulance members, would best serve the community.
Marcos Baladron, the village administrator, provided The Star with a list of current E.M.S. Department members after the legislation passed. The 62-person list includes 40 volunteers, and 22 paid members. Many of the new volunteers are village employees, among them dispatchers and lifeguards. It is unclear if they will easily step into the void left by the recent exodus of 12 volunteers and their decades of experience.
“You, Mayor Larsen, took a sledgehammer to the solid and long-standing ambulance association,” said Doreen Quaranto, who acts as the association’s chaplain. “It wasn’t broken until you got involved. Now you’re building a new department on a very unstable foundation.”
In his letter, Mayor Larsen said $125,000 had recently been approved for paid part-time E.M.T.s, and promised a new paramedic and two full-time E.M.T.s would be on their way. In addition, he wrote “Effective immediately, the Village of East Hampton will start the biggest volunteer recruitment drive ever seen locally. When your family needs an ambulance, it will arrive on time,” he wrote.
