BRATTLEBORO — Town government, still lacking a state license for its last-minute plan to take over local emergency medical services, may spend at least $50,000 more than originally budgeted in hopes of completing efforts just two weeks before a scheduled July 1 start.
The Selectboard decided abruptly this spring to drop Brattleboro’s nearly 60-year contract with Windham County’s largest EMS provider — the private, nonprofit Rescue Inc. — for the lower-priced, for-profit Golden Cross Ambulance of Claremont, New Hampshire, as part of a potential transition plan for the local fire department to take over those duties.
While Rescue proposed staffing up to six ambulances out of its Brattleboro headquarters for $285,600 this coming fiscal year, Golden Cross said it could cover the town with two vehicles for $75,000.
“I am 100% confident that you’re going to receive the level of service that you’ve received for the last 56 years, and I strongly feel it will be better,” Brattleboro Fire Chief Leonard Howard said at a meeting April 19 where the change was approved.
“I feel the contract we have before us is a more effective use of what Brattleboro has,” Selectboard Chair Ian Goodnow added, “and it’s our job to negotiate contracts that are best for the town.”
But many local residents and state EMS officials have since voiced concerns about that plan, especially after news that Golden Cross is running a similar two-ambulance program in the smaller nearby town of Rockingham but has sought outside help about 40 times so far this year for calls it couldn’t handle.
As a result, the Brattleboro Selectboard is set to consider an addendum Tuesday in which Golden Cross would expand its local coverage to three ambulances staffed 24 hours by two positions during a free three-month trial.
“After the 90-day period, the town can choose to return to the original level of service,” Interim Town Manager Patrick Moreland has written in a memo, “or if these additional assets prove useful, we can increase the level of service to include these new assets for an additional annual cost of $50,000.”
Unsaid is the fact the plan may not receive a state license without those additional investments.
The Vermont Health Department’s Office of Emergency Medical Services, still scrutinizing the Golden Cross application for Brattleboro, wants to ensure each provider “is able to maintain operational readiness with personnel, vehicle(s), equipment, and communications for responses to emergency requests on a 24 hour/day, 365 day/year basis,” according to its rules.
State EMS Chief Will Moran told VTDigger his office can’t comment on the status of the Golden Cross application other than to say “it is still under review.”
That encompasses not only the provider’s proposal, but also its plans for adequate backup in case its ambulances are busy, Moran added.
“With the partnership of the town of Brattleboro and Golden Cross, the Brattleboro Fire Department will not require a backup service,” Howard, the fire chief, just wrote in a letter to the Selectboard.
Then again, Howard noted, the town may need to call mutual aid “during large-scale events and times of extreme call volume,” including multi-alarm fires and mass casualty events and public gatherings.
In that scenario, Brattleboro would turn first to Keene, New Hampshire, and Greenfield, Massachusetts — each a half hour away — before reaching out to smaller outlying communities in Vermont and the two neighboring states, the fire chief said.
