Reader Submitted
To the editor,
On September 26, the township committee announced that plans were “in the works” to establish a new volunteer EMS organization. No specific details were given and information was not yet available to determine if the recently-contracted RWJUH ambulance services had performed per their contract.
Later last week, those details became clear when minutes of a closed September 12 fire commission meeting emerged with OEM Director John Sheridan in attendance with a few former EMTs suggesting an organization which starts out as volunteers doing fire rehab, then eases into other EMS calls with an “ultimate goal” of 24/7 coverage by taxpayer-paid EMTs and administrators.
I do not understand how just months after signing an agreement with RWJUH for presumably zero cost EMS services and telling the public that this would save taxpayers dollars, the township is now sowing the seeds for a paid EMS force that would be managed directly out of the township government, complete with management salaries, health benefits, pensions and liability. This is exactly what the RWJUH consultant’s report said was the most expensive option.
Any volunteer force still has to be supported with ambulances, equipment, a headquarters, ongoing training, etc. The Fire Department is already having trouble attracting their own volunteers and funding vehicle repairs, as indicated at their September meeting.
So, after the township contracted with RWJUH for ambulance service and fire rehab without consideration for rescue extrication, now there is a proposal to start a new volunteer force for rehab and a contract had to be signed for the fire department to do extrications. At what cost to taxpayers? If the township is just shifting the tax burden from the municipal budget to the fire commission budget, then this was all just a political stunt.
The icing on the cake was a fire commission “election” last Thursday night which was not properly advertised, was held on a Thursday night, and requested $1.65M of new expenditures, including rescue items. No ID at all was required to vote in this election that the township only announced a half hour before the election started.
The municipal government has been gambling with our residents’ health and safety. They removed a 60-year community-based non-profit EMS organization and replaced it with a hospital-based ambulance service, which is motivated by profit. The level of performance statistics that are called for in the RWJUH contract are still not being reported to the public and what is reported does not reconcile with county dispatch. If RWJUH is neither performing adequately nor saving taxpayers money, then the township committee needs to re-instate HEMS, period. The hurricanes, floods, and fast-moving fires that we’ve seen elsewhere in the country in the last few months should be a warning that we need a hometown-based, community-minded rescue squad. Our residents should not be victims of township committee members’ special interests, for-profit health care, tax-burden shifting, or just plain poor performance. In emergencies, seconds and minutes matter.
Meryl Bisberg
Hillsborough
