By Michael Ryan
CAIRO - “This is what I was afraid of,” Greene County Legislature member and Minority Leader Harry Lennon (District 8, Cairo) said, during the most recent talks on the possible creation of a countywide ambulance system.
Lennon is part of conversations hosted by lawmakers over the past seven months connected to the potential plan (please see related story in our “Better than Hearsay” column).
He was also deeply involved in a special Task Force formed a decade or so ago for exactly the same discussions, a year-long effort that got to the precipice of being approved before going poof.
Back then, the decision to move forward or not was left in the hands of the county’s 14 towns, and the multi-million dollar question has now become, who will make that determination this time?
There seems to be general consensus the network has to change and that a county system or something like it is inevitable.
But discordant views have emerged between legislators, town officials and EMS workers and bosses, all of whom are engaged in the debate, giving the impression of separate camps rather than all for one, one for all.
It was initially hoped, when the dialogues began last fall, that funding would be set aside in the legislature’s 2026 budget cycle to get this operational, replacing municipally-owned systems.
That does not appear doable at this stage, although some movement in that direction could still occur, with more legislative meetings on tap.
In the meantime, the monthly sessions are sounding redundant as county officials produce numbers on how much it will all cost and town officials demand absolute clarity on what they are calling a “business plan.”
Great worries are being expressed about how the transition would happen, in terms of transferring ownership of equipment and ambulances, etc. to the county and how the towns will recoup dollars already spent.
Multiple opinions are being heard, with county officials saying an outside consult could help with the changeover, making it relatively simple.
That hasn’t fully allayed trepidations, but the brontosaurus in the room is, who will pull the trigger and when will that trigger be pulled or not?
“This is what I was afraid of,” Lennon said, and when asked in a followup phone interview to describe in more detail what he meant, Lennon answered, “don’t read too much into that.
“Here we are. We’ve done an enormous amount of work, getting all the data needed to have a good idea what this will cost,” Lennon said.
County administrator Shaun Groden and Raymond Ward, the head of Real Property Tax Services for the county, have crunched the numbers, arriving at a figure of $!5 million, further broken down to approximately $125 more per year in taxes for an average single-family homeowner.
“I don’t want to put this kind of effort into this and have nothing come of it,” Lennon said, recalling the earlier Task Force and its endeavors.
“We had put in an enormous amount of work. A group of us went around to the different towns giving presentations about everything. At the end of the day nothing came of it,” Lennon said.
The next legislative confabulation is slated for June 11 and it does not appear a decision about the county plan will be made then or soon.
Timing matters because the county would need to have its budget numbers tentatively in place by Labor Day, so the metaphorical trigger could still be pulled but would need something unforeseen for that to materialize.
Meanwhile, town supervisors are trying to put together a private chat on June 5, aimed at getting them all on the same page about the process, although nobody can say what that looks like despite months of talks.
And legislature chairman Patrick Linger has proposed writing a resolution that would declare ambulance response an essential service, along the same lines as firefighting and the sheriff’s department.
For reasons no one can explain, the State has not deemed ambulance response an essential service which could open many doors toward consolidation and financing.
There is nothing now on the books that says a town or county must provide ambulance response. The current system has evolved over many years, beginning as volunteerism which is going the way of the brontosaurus.
If the county goes maverick, declaring ambulance response essential, it will be significant whether they put it in the form of a law or a resolution.
A resolution would be a non-binding document. A local law would have more teeth although the legalities need more exploration.
“I will be bringing this up to our board in the next month or so,” Linger says, likely in July, offering it through the usual committee channels.
Thought is also being given to creating a new county position in advance of any decision about the countywide system.
That person would have the power to prepare the groundwork for a unified system in terms of administration, purchasing, staffing, scheduling, etc., and establish a smooth transition calendar.
It would require a financial investment prior to the fact and could be viewed as the county pulling the trigger with or without blessings from the towns.
The upcoming June 11 session could be a turning point in whether the county concept gains real momentum or is a deja’ vu for Lennon.
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