Letter to the Editor

T.O.M. Ambulance District

By Al Baty, Montgomery
Posted 1/6/22

Let’s see, currently being sold as nice to have but it comes with another tax on the property owner. I wonder, if I were to need Ambulance Service in the future would I still be billed for this …

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Letter to the Editor

T.O.M. Ambulance District

Posted

Let’s see, currently being sold as nice to have but it comes with another tax on the property owner. I wonder, if I were to need Ambulance Service in the future would I still be billed for this service? I would be already paying property taxes to support it. Doesn’t seem right that I’d be billed also?

The Ambulance Corps currently operates in a deficit and depends on volunteers for support. My hat is off to those volunteers and that said, what does the future hold for volunteerism? I don’t believe the future bolds well for volunteers, especially since staffing is currently a problem. More paid positions on the horizon? Definitely.

Playing with tax money, if an Ambulance District is created, funded with tax money and overseen by the Town Board and the T.O.M. Ambulance Corps is given the contract to provide services, where is the fine line drawn before their paid employees are reclassified as Town employees? Another issue of concern in dealing with this amount of money (estimated $800,000 and it will only get more expensive to property owners). Why is there not an RFP (request for proposal) being issued for additional bidders to provide these services? Unfortunately I was not able to get together with Brian Maher before I decided to write this but I would like to include an excerpt from our email traffic. Brian Maher, “The town will have full authority over the setting of the budget and we plan to work to shore up the current town EMS business model.  We will watch every tax payer dollar to look out for any waste and mismanagement and we will have protections in our contract that “should” work similarly to an RFP performance requirement setup.” At this point I believe it would be fair to say that the Town Board would be running a business or real close to it.

I’d submitted a proposal to Brian which he’d acknowledge had been in prior discussions going forward and with that said here were my thoughts; “The T.O.M. could build a new centrally located facility to house an ambulance service which could be leased (minimal amount to lock in T.O.M. service area) to an ambulance service provider under terms listed on an RFP. Said service provider would bill T.O.M. for a yearly amount charged monthly for the stated contract term (ten or more years would be a suggestion). All contract increases would be negotiated yearly or on a time frame indicated by the RFP. Building maintenance, utilities, etc. would be the service provider’s responsibility moving forward. That all said, an outside contractor (service provider) would limit the tugging at the Town purse strings and that of the town taxpayer. As I’m sure you’re very aware of all the costs (vehicles, insurance, legal liabilities, maintenance, salaries, pension costs, personnel training, office support, etc. etc.) associated with an ambulance service (Good luck finding a viable stream of volunteers). Of course your KO (contracting officer and/or a KO representative) would be the go between the contractor and T.O.M. to insure RFP performance requirements are met and maintained with the ability of the T.O.M. to serve contract cancellation notice to said service provider should Performance Requirements not be met.

This contract would set up an exclusive ambulance district for the contract awardee and other than current costs which the T.O.M. now pay ($150,000 from the General Fund) and whatever the town is paying for certain invoices (??) may be sufficient to cover the T.O.M. yearly expenses to the awardee whom would be primarily billing insurance for their expenses.

Last thing, I would like to thank those folks from Walden and Maybrook for wanting more information and providing due diligence moving forward unlike my Village of Montgomery Officials. You folks should provide due diligence for the property owners you represent before jumping over the cliff.