BRATTLEBORO — A month after Town Meeting approved money it believed was for Brattleboro’s nearly 60-year emergency medical service provider, the local Selectboard signed a contract with a different ambulance company Tuesday night to cap a particularly divisive public debate.
Residents approved a 2022-23 municipal budget in March that included $285,600 for Rescue Inc., which covers more than a dozen communities in southern Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire.
“As we look ahead, our members and staff remain dedicated to our 56-year tradition of providing exceptional emergency medical care and transport,” Rescue’s chief of operations, Drew Hazelton, wrote in the town meeting report. “We are excited to be able to continue providing these services this year at the same per-capita rate as last year.”
But unbeknownst to residents, newly hired Town Manager Yoshi Manale reopened talks his predecessor had completed with Rescue so he could request a breakdown of the private nonprofit EMS provider’s administrative costs and insurance compensation.
“We were asking for financial justification for their assessment,” Manale told VTDigger, “and in the absence of that information, we started the negotiations at zero.”
Both Manale and Rescue disagree on everything the other reportedly said in the Feb. 9 session and only agree on the fact municipal leaders hadn’t spoken with the provider since.
In response, Rescue wrote the town last week saying it couldn’t serve Brattleboro without reimbursement after the current contract ends June 30.
“If the town would like to come and speak with me about an agreement for service beyond June 30, 2022, please contact me no later than May 1, 2022, to schedule a meeting,” Hazelton wrote the town.
Manale instead issued a press release last week stating the provider “would no longer be providing emergency medical services,” spurring the town to seek a one-year contract with Golden Cross Ambulance of Claremont, New Hampshire, until the fire department can secure enough staff and supplies to take over EMS efforts as early as next year.
The Selectboard, meeting to consider the Golden Cross contract Tuesday night, expressed concern that Rescue’s chief of operations wouldn’t share financial information (something the head of the provider’s board of trustees, who wasn’t contacted by the town, said Hazelton wasn’t authorized to do).
“The continued lack of transparency,” Selectboard Chair Ian Goodnow said, “meant that I, as one board member, felt it was time to look for a different EMS provider.”
But many residents have questioned the town’s own lack of transparency in discarding a nearly 60-year community institution in a matter of days, especially when Rescue doesn’t agree with municipal leaders’ description of what happened at their sole meeting Feb. 9.
“Everything’s backwards here,” former Selectboard member Dora Bouboulis said. “One thing that you’ve left out of the whole process here is the public. Study should come first. Public input should come first.”
Local lawyer Jonathan Secrest noted that while municipal leaders gave residents only a week’s notice of the EMS change, the Selectboard had spent two meetings this month discussing a downtown sculpture commemorating Brattleboro’s century-old Harris Hill Ski Jump.
“More public input has gone into the ski jump statue than this decision, which is fairly monumental for the town,” Secrest said.
Municipal leaders haven’t complained about Rescue’s competency. Instead, they criticized the March 25 letter Hazelton wrote the town that also opposed fire department plans to boost its own EMS efforts after “years of poor patient turnover, gender discrimination, verbal abuse and general lack of cooperation by certain members.”
Municipal leaders took exception to the accusations.
“After an extensive internal investigation by our Human Resources department, we found this to be without merit,” they wrote in a reply to Hazelton.
Several residents asked why municipal leaders were putting so much stock in one letter, which could have been avoided if the town had done something other than go silent after the Feb. 9 meeting.
“The letter sounds like it was, in the most gracious version, hastily drawn,” Secrest said. “If there was still hope until that letter came and then you’re not talking anymore with them, it’s just a sad breakdown in communication.”
Rank-and-file workers from both Rescue and the fire department have expressed respect for each other publicly, leaving the disagreement to the town manager and the EMS provider’s chief of operations.
A few Selectboard members acknowledged local leaders had a role in the rift, which has fermented for years as recently retired town manager Peter Elwell played peacemaker.
“I think we could have done better,” Selectboard member Jessica Gelter said at Tuesday’s meeting.
But others solely blamed Rescue’s leadership for ending the relationship because of what Goodnow called its “seriously concerning” letter to the town manager and “lack of transparency.”
(The Selectboard has yet to reply to VTDigger’s earlier request for a copy of Manale’s contract, which began Jan. 1 for an unreported number of years and salary.)
The town is set to host two public forums on the issue: April 23 at 1 p.m. at the fire station, and April 26 at 6 p.m. at Brooks Memorial Library.
“We hope,” municipal leaders have written Hazelton, “as we move forward with a new provider and transition toward BFD Fire/EMS, that we can count on Rescue Inc. for mutual aid.”
Rescue’s chief of operations said that statement left him wide-eyed.
“Can you throw out your service for 56 years and then ask them to pick up the slack when you can’t cover it?” Hazelton is quoted in the current issue of Windham County’s weekly The Commons. “Is that even a reasonable request?”
