by Sean Ruppert, Staff Writer
HIGHTSTOWN — A volunteer leader here told the Borough Council last week that it is “shameful” the borough hasn’t entered into an agreement with East Windsor for emergency medical services.
Mayor Bob Patten initially seemed resistant to the idea but later instructed the borough administrator to reach out to East Windsor.
For the time being, Hightstown remains in an interlocal agreement with Robbinsville. But it remained unseen how long that arrangement will stay in place.
Hightstown First Aid Squad Capt. Curtis Crowell — 2008 Borough Volunteer of the Year and husband of Councilwoman Isabel McGinty — strongly recommended a deal with East Windsor at the March 3 council budget meeting.
Mayor Patten said the borough shouldn’t necessarily look at East Windsor as its only possible partner. He also claimed that East Windsor Mayor Janice Mironov — with whom he has had a contentious relationship for years — had indicated in a letter that she did not want to make any arrangements with Hightstown.
”She said, and I am paraphrasing here, that she won’t consider any shared services until we ‘get our act together,’ whatever that means,” Mayor Patten said.
In January 2007, Mayor Mironov and two East Windsor Township Council members sent a letter to Mayor Patten responding to a request he made on Jan. 24 that the township decide by Feb. 5 whether it wanted to join Hightstown in a garbage collection service. Mayor Mironov responded in her letter by saying that it was not nearly enough time to fully investigate the issue and that East Windsor’s government was not run by “the seat of our pants.”
The letter also stated that the East Windsor mayor and council did not want to be dragged into Hightstown politics and that they were tired of Mayor Patten blaming the borough’s financial situation on the township.
Mayor Mironov repeated last week that East Windsor had offered to let Hightstown join the township on a five-year contract with Monmouth Ocean Hospital Services Corp. (MONOC) for EMS service in 2005.
”I personally spoke with him three times and I sent him a letter about the contract,” she said. “He chose at that time, for his own reasons, not to participate with East Windsor Township in that service.”
That rejection, borough officials have said, came at a time when Hightstown was getting free EMS service from St. Francis Emergency Medical Services. The arrangement ended in November 2005, when the borough paid $17,000 to continue the service until Jan 2, 2006.
Mayor Patten instructed Borough Administrator Candace Gallagher March 5 to write a letter to the township asking that it consider the borough as a potential partner when its MONOC contract runs out in 2010.
Council members suggested that night that perhaps local volunteers could take over all nights and limit the Robbinsville deal to daytime coverage. Councilman Mike Theokas said the borough might want to end its interlocal agreement with Robbinsville altogether but not immediately.
The borough’s deal with Robbinsville costs more than $200,000. The arrangement brought in $15,500 in billing revenue to the borough in 2008.
Borough volunteers supplement the Robbinsville EMS coverage on three nights a week.
With the town facing an approximately $510,000 budget shortfall — the equivalent of a 24-cent tax hike under last year’s property valuation — the service’s high price tag has received a considerable amount of attention from the Borough Council, as it did last year when no changes were made.
Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried said a cancellation by Hightstown would eliminate the hours of two-part-time employees but would not have any significant impact on his town’s operation.
”They pay for their people and we pay for ours,” he said. “We back each other up and they use our management team and billing.”
However, he said, such a move “would be a loss to the region.”
This year a new Borough Council budget committee recently unveiled recommendations that include serious investigation of other options for providing EMS.
Mr. Crowell appeared before the council and presented a breakdown of the EMS costs to Hightstown residents in 2008. The wages paid to the professional EMS workers comprise about 91 percent of the total expenditures. The borough paid $208,044 in wages to Robbinsville, along with $6,333 for equipment, $1,400 for general membership, $5,597 for medical equipment and supplies, all to the volunteer squad, for a total of $228,834.
The volunteer squad also spent $29,272 of its own funds.
Councilman Jeff Bond questioned Mr. Crowell about different aspects of the EMS service, but Mr. Crowell kept coming back to the same point.
”We have to have some reasonable agreement with the township because that is our obvious partner,” Mr. Crowell said. “I don’t think we have made enough of an effort to get that done.”

