BENNINGTON — The Select Board on Monday approved the Town Meeting Day warning, including a separate request for what would be the first-ever town funding of the nonprofit emergency response squad.
The rescue squad question will go to the voters March 7, after an article asking for $207,059 was added to the warning via citizen petition.
The board had scheduled a special meeting for Monday to consider the squad’s request, prepared to discuss whether a lower amount could be added to the warning or included directly into the town’s $12.46 million budget for fiscal 2018.
But squad Executive Director Forest Weyen issued a statement Monday morning saying the organization’s board had decided not to pull back its petition, which had gained more than the required 435 voter signatures to place the question on the ballot.
“After much discussion with our board of directors and town administration, Bennington Rescue has decided to not alter or pull the petition that was submitted earlier this year for the March 2017 town ballot,” the statement said. “This was a tough decision, but upon much contemplation we feel that at this time this is the best course of action.”
“The town and Bennington Rescue were working collaboratively on finding creative solutions to solving this problem; however, upon discussion with legal experts there was concern about these actions,” Weyen added.
He said the “major concern was about the `uncharted territory’ that we would be entering by pulling or amending down our petition amount. We certainly do not want the town of Bennington nor the Bennington Rescue Squad to face any allegations of election tampering or uncontemplated legal actions.”
During the brief board meeting Monday, members unanimously approved the annual warning as proposed with the rescue squad ballot question listed as originally worded.
Town Manager Stuart Hurd said after the session that the budget without the 14 funding requests from local organizations totals roughly $12.45 million, including $8.45 million for the general fund and just under $4 million for the highway fund.
The budget and separate funding requests together would require a 0.596 cent increase in the current overall town tax rate of $1.0875 per $100 of assessed property value.
Hurd said the current July-to-June budget was approved last year at $12.145 million.
In addition to the request from the rescue squad, there are five requests from organizations for funding amounts ranging from $10,000 to $25,000.
Town voters also will be asked to approve bonding for up to $3.2 million for a new public works facility. If approved, the bond is not expected to add to the fiscal 2018 budget total.
During discussion of the rescue squad request and decision to leave the petition amount as submitted, the board heard from Shaftsbury Select Board Chairman Tim Scoggins, who described how that board had inserted a funding amount in the town budget for the rescue squad.
Scoggins said the squad had requested $42,685 — compared with $2,000 approved last year — from Shaftsbury, but that Select Board agreed to place a $7,000 appropriation in the town budget.
He added that his board also has asked to have a member added to the rescue squad board and suggested Bennington do the same. “We would hope Bennington is involved, as you are the biggest (town),” he said.
However, the Bennington board members said they felt too rushed by an application deadline of Friday for the rescue squad board and would want to first debate the matter further.
“I don’t think there is much more to talk about tonight. They have made their decision,” board member Donald Campbell said at one point. He said he had come to the special session, which he proposed, prepared to discuss having a lower funding amount added into the town budget. He had suggested providing $30,000.
Rescue squad representatives did not attend the special meeting.
Like a number of other rescue squads in the state and region, the Bennington nonprofit organization has struggled in recent years with reduced revenue and rising costs of operation. A major factor, Weyen said, is the large number of ambulance calls that are nonbillable, including 26.8 percent of the squad’s 3,391 emergency calls over the past year.
Nonbillable calls, he said, include any call during which no one is transported to the hospital yet the ambulance has responded. He said the issue is a problem for squads nationwide.
The organization is the second largest EMS services provider in Vermont by call volume, he said, with 6,000 including nonemergency transports. It trails only Regional Ambulance Service of Rutland.
