LEGISLATURE STUFF - Like a Rolling Stone

By Michael Ryan

CAIRO - The clock is ticking on creating a countywide ambulance system after initial dollar amounts were unveiled on the cost to do so.

Those numbers were revealed at a special meeting of the Greene County Legislature, last week, continuing months-long talks on the condition of emergency medical services locally and throughout the industry.

County administrator Shaun Groden was asked to prepare the estimate, sharing the details with emergency medical services professionals and town government leaders who are part of the discussions.

Groden honed in on what he said were the two most necessary price tags; hiring more people to address worker shortages and paying appreciably more money and providing better benefits to everyone in the trenches.

Combining those elements, and using an intricate scale of required annual manpower and womanpower hours to operate the most efficient fleet of ambulances, Groden came up with a total of $3.2 million.

That number represents a straight-up increase over the $7.1 million towns and the county, together, are now spending for ambulance service.

And that is relative to the fact that every dollar, whether paid through a town budget or the county budget, exits the pockets of we mules of taxation.

Groden emphasized the $3.2 million does not include inner administration expenses and the fiscally complex changeover from separate squads to one system in terms of actual ambulances, equipment, supplies, etc.

It does, however, confirm what everybody fully expected, that a countywide system will not be cheap, although there are beneficial tradeoffs.

Many towns, especially on the mountaintop, have declared it is simply a matter of time before they can no longer sustain an ambulance squad.

The county system would deliver them from the ambulance business, with all its headaches, and is fully expected to be very proficient, offering swift response times to a call and the highest level of advanced life support (paramedic) treatment on the scene and en route to a hospital.

Some if not all of that now exists, even while it is generally acknowledged the current system is financially redundant to the point of wasteful, and headed toward, if not on the brink of, failing.

All of those factors prompted the legislature to hire an outside consulting company to perform an objective study of current services, a study that contained four options for improvement including a unified system.

While it came as no surprise the cost would rise for what will be the largest single county department, seeing the numbers on paper for the first time had immediate and opposite let’s-do-this and hold-our-horses impacts.

Since these discussions began, in the late fall of 2024, there has been a debate over who would ultimately make the decision on establishing the countywide system or not.

It is boiling down to a choice that shall be rendered by the fourteen county legislators after they hold two or maybe three more meetings with local officials and EMS personnel, meaning early this summer.

That has been the goal voiced by legislature chairman Patrick Linger and other proponents, wanting the dollars included in the 2026 budget cycle and the system up and running or transitioning.

This had led to further debate about whether every town would participate and pay, whether they want to or not, if the county system was set up.

“We’re in,” Windham town supervisor Thomas Hoyt said at last week’s meeting, a declaration Hunter town supervisor Sean Mahoney said is agreed upon by all six mountaintop towns

However, another immediate impact of hearing Groden’s initial estimates was a burning desire, by those unsure this is the right course, to receive complete numbers on every aspect of the possible changeover.

Linger, in a followup interview, said the county, based on those concerns, has already reached out to the original consultant,

The consultant, Fitch & Associates, will be asked to take their study a step further, providing nitty gritty figures on complete inventories of municipal units and the county flycar program.

Their research would come closer to nailing down a bare bones bottom line and offer a smooth method for possibly transferring ownership of municipal ambulances and equipment, etc. to the county.

There is money still available for the consultant fee from $100,00 earlier set aside for their work. This new effort could take as long as 90-days.

That would cut things close but still make the summertime decision doable, unless there is a repeat of the consultant’s first efforts.

Some towns flat out refused to cooperate with their request for vital data, and there are indications that could happen again (please see a related story in our “Better Than Hearsay” column, this week).

Meanwhile, there is escalating discord within the legislative ranks about the countywide system, apparently rooted in some towns wanting to retain the choice to participate in it or not.

And there are growing reports that a co-called “smear campaign” will be launched by opponents of the county takeover, perhaps resulting in a knock-down, drag out, public argy-bargy.

Under any circumstances, the changeover from decades of independently operated ambulance squads to flying the county banner, with its loss of hometown identity, was always going to be arduous.

The next special session is slated for May 14 with one notable difference from the previous five get togethers. As everyone left the meeting room, last Wednesday night, the usual agenda had not been set.

There was an uneasy, heretofore not present sense, that unification was becoming a Bob Dylanish rolling stone with no direction home.