Gardner OKs Start To Ambulance Service

Gardner OKs Start To Ambulance Service Approves hiring of staff without waiting for presentation about it

Andrew Mansfield Reporter GARDNER  The City Council decided there’s no need to wait any longer for establishing a city-run basic ambulance service to operate out of the Fire Department – they are ready to make it happen. “We have the data and we don’t need to slow it down anymore,” said Councilor Paul Tassone. After some back and forth at the council’s Tuesday night meeting, a motion made by Councilor Matthew Vance to approve a proposal from Mayor Mark Hawke to spend $61,569 of the city’s free cash account to hire seven additional firefighters passed by an 8-2 margin. That money order covers those salaries for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends June 30. Hiring additional staff will allow the city to begin the process of running a basic ambulance service, with Advanced Life Support services involving a paramedic to still be done by MedStar, the company that currently has the city’s primary ambulance provider contract. By way of background, the idea of operating a city-run ambulance service is not unique to Gardner, as most Worcester County cities and towns already do so. When Gardner switched from Wood’s to MedStar as the primary ambulance provider in June 2014, the deal was made with the understanding the city would pursue running its own ambulance service, prompting over a year’s worth of information gathering and discussion over the matter. When Mayor Mark Hawke met with the Finance Committee last week to discuss his proposal to hire more firefighters to make running an ambulance service possible, he cited a need to begin the process now as it takes months to hire new staff and send them to a fire academy for training. Saying the initial start-up period for an ambulance service is the most costly and also the time with the least amount of receipts from transports, Hawke wanted to get a head-start on the matter before next fiscal year. Before presenting his proposal to councilors, he said he first wanted to reach a verbal agreement with the Fire Department union to no longer run a dispatch service out of its department, as there is a dispatch center located at the police station and dispatch could be streamlined by having all calls be handled there. By doing so, fire staff would be freed up further to run the ambulance or perform other duties. Finance Committee members responded to Hawke that they would like to hear a new presentation on the matter, as the entire City Council was last presented with information in early 2015 when city officials along with outside consultants spoke with the City Council about the financial viability of running a basic ambulance service. At the council meeting Tuesday, Councilor and Finance Committee member Ronald Cormier made a motion for the council as a whole to have such a presentation before voting on hiring additional firefighters. Councilor Karen Hardern spoke out against his motion, which ultimately failed by a 6-4 vote. “We’ve been talking about this for at least a year or more. I know we have two new councilors, but I would like to see this move forward,” she said. Councilor James Boone, who is serving his first term, did speak up and say he would like to see a new presentation himself. The failing of Cormier’s motion led Vance to make a motion that the spending proposal to hire new firefighters be passed then and there, with several councilors showing support for that, with Tassone citing a desire to not wait any longer. “Our intent was not to slow it down, our intent was to have all the facts and figures,” responded Cormier. He added that a new presentation would happen “expeditiously” and said he “very strongly” believed doing so would not delay things and would make councilors more informed. But once his motion failed, he ultimately voted in favor of the motion to pass the spending item, which only City Council President James Walsh and Councilor Scott Graves voted against. “Despite what was said we haven’t gotten updated information. Why now? It’s kind of strange,” said Graves. “I just think it’s premature,” said Walsh. The data Tassone and others referred to came from Fire Chief Richard Ares and Hawke, who provided councilors with information on the city’s tracking of ambulance transports done by MedStar last year. Using those numbers as a baseline to project how many transports the city could expect to do with its own service and taking into account the revenue generated from charging $440 per transport, the city has calculated the revenue gained would exceed the costs of paying staff and running the service, creating a yearly surplus. Ares attended the council meeting and called their decision “an important step taken.” He said it allows for the hiring of more firefighters, the city would offer a good ambulance service and be in-line with what the majority of Worcester County is already doing, and the revenue generated would pay for the staff, not burdening the taxpayer. “We first brought it up over 20 years ago. … It seems to me to be a win-win all the way around.”