In June, when Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Jerry Garguilo ordered the dissolution of the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association, the only question left unanswered was what would happen with the nearly $400,000 in the association’s bank account. On Aug. 6, Justice Garguilo ordered the full amount (now only $291,953.06, according to court documents) transferred to the East Hampton Village Ambulance Members, a new nonprofit that was incorporated by the village last fall.
It was a stunning end for the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association, a 50-year-old organization that had provided uninterrupted ambulance service to the village and surrounding areas during its tenure.
“I’m actually sick to my stomach,” texted Geraldine Merola, who, last year, left the association after two years of service (she was a volunteer with Sag Harbor for seven years and is now a paid paramedic in Bridgehampton and Springs). Since the fall, she has been acting vice president of the ambulance association and an outspoken critic of Mayor Jerry Larsen’s dealings with the corps. The village took over ambulance services from the nonprofit association last year, creating an Emergency Medical Service Department and angering many longtime members of the ambulance corps. “It just doesn’t seem right. We may be on the losing side, but no one is ever going to convince me we are on the wrong side. I have 24 volunteers with 486 combined years of service being thrown aside like yesterday’s trash. There’s no way I couldn’t fight for them.”
Mayor Jerry Larsen said that exempt members of the ambulance corps are still entitled to their beach permits, retirement benefits, and gym access. “We never tried to take benefits away from members who left with exempt status,” he said. “Not one benefit has been taken away from those people. Teri Bertha got terminated, so she gets nothing. Ms. Merola was only an E.H.V.A.A. member for two years, so she wasn’t entitled to benefits.”
Ms. Merola and Ms. Bertha, who had been acting president of the ambulance association (both were removed from their posts by the judge’s June decision, while Mary Mott, the ambulance chief and head of the E.M.S. Department, and her officers were reinstated to “facilitate a winding up of the association’s affairs”) used their personal funds to wage their battle against the village. She said 22 contributors, two-thirds of the members of the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association and the rest community members, raised $7,000 to retain a lawyer and pay for the filing of the appeal. Ms. Merola said that as of June 18 they had an outstanding balance of $2,037.28 with Joel Ziegler, their lawyer, and another bill of $44,385.47 deemed negotiable, pending the outcome.
Mr. Ziegler had been disqualified from representing the organization by the June decision but continued to represent Ms. Merola and Ms. Bertha as “non-parties” at the July 22 valuation hearing.
“It’s a complete loss as far as I can see,” Mr. Ziegler said by phone. However, he didn’t think anything could have changed the outcome. “There was a predisposition on the part of the judge to favor the municipality over the members. I don’t know why he had that predisposition, but it seems he ignored the fact that these people were the volunteers who established the fund and had established a new nonprofit to continue the work. They should have been entitled to at least a share of the money.”
Ms. Merola and Ms. Bertha hoped to create a new nonprofit called the East Hampton Volunteer Ambulance Foundation to receive the funds had the judge ruled in their favor. “We were hoping to secure some of those assets to continue these benefits for those who lost them and offer other benefits to volunteer E.M.S. workers on the whole East End,” texted Ms. Merola. Justice Garguilo was unconvinced. “The court finds that the non-parties lack standing and are strangers to the association and as such have no right to assert any claim over any assets of the association.”
“The judge didn’t allow for any of the funds to be shared and instead is treating them as strangers to the association, instead of people who were intimately involved with it. It’s ironic, because the volunteers I represented had their souls dedicated to it,” said Mr. Ziegler.
Brad Pinsky, a lawyer hired by the village specifically to deal with the ambulance matter, and Lisa Perillo, the village attorney, told Justice Garguilo that Ms. Mott had agreed with the village to have the funds transferred to the East Hampton Village Ambulance Members Inc., and that’s how he ultimately ruled.
According to Mr. Pinsky, Ms. Merola’s testimony at the valuation hearing was at least part of their problem.
“They put somebody on the stand and the judge asked them what they were going to do with the money. They wanted to spend the money for a purpose which is not permitted by law. The E.H.V.A.A. certificate of incorporation said you can only spend the money in the Village of East Hampton, and for their volunteers. That’s why the money was raised. Once they testified they were going to spend the money in violation of the corporation’s purposes, that was enough for the judge.”
Marcos Baladron, the village administrator, said he had spoken with Ms. Mott about a plan to use a portion of the funds as scholarship money for village emergency medical technicians who want to become full paramedics. Volunteers who want to become E.M.T.s have the $,1200 to $1,500 cost paid for by the ambulance company, and Mr. Baladron said the funds could be used to incentivize E.M.T.s to take the next step.
“Our goal is to give young people, who are E.M.T.s in our department, who are choosing to move forward, the opportunity to maybe get a career direction out of it,” said Ms. Mott. Parameters for who would receive scholarships were not yet set, but only volunteers with a minimum of three years in the department and active members would be considered, she said. As for the roughly $100,000 decrease in the coffers over the last year, Ms. Mott said, “Whatever the past administrations spent this money on, I kept the same plan. The annual dinner took a big chunk out of it. We pay for monthly meetings, we ordered new sweatshirts, new T-shirts. That’s how the fund has always been used.”
“It’s unfortunate it had to come to this,” said Mayor Larsen, “but the village always had the community in mind. It’s a better service now and it’s going to continue to get better.”
