BRATTLEBORO — A proposed fire department takeover of local emergency medical services may cost taxpayers more per year than they’ve paid the region’s largest and longest-serving EMS provider, Rescue Inc., annually over the past six decades, a feasibility study has found.
But before the town decides its EMS future, it must address a “deficiency” in the number of staffers it has on hand to battle fires, according to the municipally commissioned report by the AP Triton consulting company.
The Brattleboro Selectboard surprised residents last spring when it voted to drop its nearly 60-year contract with the private nonprofit Rescue and hire competitor Golden Cross Ambulance to help the fire department pick up EMS coverage.
Local leaders claimed at the time that the plan not only would cost less than Rescue’s $285,600 annual fee but also reap an estimated $500,000 to $700,000 in yearly insurance revenue after expenses.
But that original simple outlook — which hasn’t proven true six months into a test run — is much more complicated, according to the 112-page consultant’s report.
The AP Triton study explored the feasibility of not only a fire department takeover but also returning to an outside provider or running a hybrid program using both public and private resources.
If the town funded extra fire department staff and supplies to cover all EMS calls, it would collect an estimated $935,626 in annual insurance payments but still need to pay more than $300,000 a year to cover $1.2 million in expenses — a figure higher than the most recent Rescue contract, the study found.
Reducing the number of available EMS vehicles and staffers would bring down the bill, but also limit service to one 24-hour ambulance and one 10-hour-a-day vehicle — less than the current two 24-hour units and one backup for a town of 12,184 people.
The study expressed a more immediate concern about a “deficiency” in the number of firefighters on hand to simply battle blazes. The department now covers each shift with a captain and six firefighters.
“The current staffing model uses two of six duty firefighters to staff the two private ambulances,” AP Triton wrote in its report. “This results in a deficit of 4-6 firefighters per shift.”
The consulting company calls for a “goal” of having at least eight firefighters on duty at any time, which still would be well below a national standard of 17.
“Currently your seven is too low and, in most cases, not the safe response we want,” Rich Buchanan, AP Triton senior project manager, told local leaders at a meeting Tuesday night. “We’d like you to get to 12 over the next few years, then you depend on your (mutual aid) neighbors to come in to get you more toward 14, 15.”
Selectboard members said they needed time to digest the report and hoped to decide on the town’s EMS future before a current one-year contract with Golden Cross expires June 30.
“We’re definitely putting this on for another agenda, probably multiple agendas in the coming months,” Chair Ian Goodnow said.
The EMS issue has roiled the town ever since the selectboard approved the transition plan in April with little public notice or debate, citing concerns about costs and the perceived “incendiary” tone of a March 25 letter from Rescue about snagged contract negotiations.
“We’re the town and we can hire contractor A or contractor B,” board member Elizabeth McLoughlin said at the time. “Contractor A sent us a nasty letter, so we go with contractor B.”
But since the transition began in July, Brattleboro has spent enough on unanticipated expenses to eat up the promised savings. Local leaders who focused on finances in the spring recently have switched to saying “it was never all about the money,” instead emphasizing the need to consider greater municipal control.
Not a single resident has appeared at a selectboard meeting to agree with the decision. Instead, many have questioned why local leaders complain that the private nonprofit Rescue won’t release internal financial information, yet the municipal government has denied a public records request for its own documents while issuing a series of incorrect or incomplete claims about its EMS plans.
“This is a manufactured crisis,” local lawyer William Kraham wrote in a letter to The Commons, a Windham County weekly. “This is not a choice between using Uber or Lyft for your ride to the hospital. … I have a sense of foreboding that our elected officers have chosen to gamble with people’s lives.”
Kraham, who credits Rescue with saving him from sudden cardiac arrest when minutes count, is concerned that the town’s EMS plan when busy and needing backup is to turn to Keene, New Hampshire, or Greenfield, Massachusetts — each a half-hour away.
Although both Rescue and the fire department acknowledge a tense history working together, local leaders have released little about the decision-making process behind the switch.
“The fire department leadership (has) long expressed an interest in having a more robust role in EMS delivery in Brattleboro,” municipal officials told VTDigger in a note denying a request for public records, “and this view came to be embraced by the former town manager.”
Octavian “Yoshi” Manale, who started as town manager in January, drafted undisclosed paperwork that preceded approval of the change in April — eight weeks before he abruptly resigned under an agreement with the selectboard that came with a $72,515 severance package.
Manale has gone on to become the new city manager in Claremont, New Hampshire, where the mayor who recruited him is the owner of Golden Cross.
