BENNINGTON — A hefty funding request from the Bennington Rescue Squad will be the topic of a special meeting of the Bennington Select Board next week. The rescue squad is running steep annual budget deficits.
A petition with enough voter signatures to place a $207,459 request from the rescue squad on the March 7 ballot was submitted last week to the town clerk. However, squad Executive Director Forest Weyen told board members on Monday that the request could be scaled back if the special warrant article could be amended, or if an amount could be placed in the budget as a line item. Weyen has not proposed a specific number.
During recent budget sessions, board members have discussed a lower amount, which would cause a smaller increase in the local tax rate.
The squad finds itself in “a very weird situation,” Weyen said. It has the signatures to force a vote but its hands are tied should it agree to a lower figure. Weyen asked board members if they could legally amend the figure or place a lower amount in the town budget, rather than as a special article.
“We don’t necessarily want to go for the $200,000 right away,” he said, adding that the squad also is seeking more funding from the other towns it serves and has already agreed to a lower amount than previously sought from Shaftsbury.
The squad had requested $42,685 — compared to $2,000 last year — from Shaftsbury, but that town’s Select Board agreed to place a $7,000 appropriation in the town budget.
During a recent budget session in Bennington, a Select Board member recommended $33,000 in funding for the squad, based on the same per-capita amount Shaftsbury officials had used.
Town Manager Stuart Hurd said the squad’s ballot petition has been accepted and approved, and the dollar amount can’t be lowered, nor can the question be pulled back, unless a number of petition signers withdraw their support, bringing the number below the required 5 percent of town voters — 435.
He said, however, that the Select Board could choose to add an amount for the squad to the budget as a line item.
The deficit now totals more than $200,000 per year, Weyen said, and the organization will have to find significantly more revenue to keep offering the services it now provides.
Rescue squad board member Peter Lawrence told the Select Board the squad is using its reserve funds to cover the shortfalls for now, but members “didn’t want to wait until we were ready to close” before raising the subject with the town. Those reserves will be depleted in several years.
The reality is, he said, “If we did not provide this service, the town would have to provide it, and it would cost exponentially more than it does now.”
Lawrence added that the local squad is not alone in dealing with budget deficits. He said that the Village Ambulance Service in Williamstown, Massachusetts, recently informed the town about the prospect of closing its doors if a major infusion of funding can’t be secured by summer.
“It is very important that we have this discussion so we can make sure we can continue to have these services,” Lawrence said.
The board, which had been about to vote on the annual warrant for the town, postponed that action and scheduled a special meeting on Jan. 30 at 5:30 p.m. to discuss the rescue squad request and then finalize the warrant for the March 7 meeting. The warrant must be completed and posted in the newspaper by Feb. 4, Hurd said.
Board members agreed that emergency services must be supported, but they expressed concern over the $200,000 figure, which was estimated would increase the tax rate by 2 percent.
Weyen has said Bennington is one of only a few Vermont communities that don’t directly fund an ambulance service. The organization is the second largest EMS services provider in Vermont by call volume, he said, behind Burlington.
The squad responded to more than 6,000 calls in total over the past year and 3,391 emergency calls, he said. Of the emergency responses, 912, or 26.8 percent, were non-billable calls, which were cited as a significant reason for the budget shortfalls and an issue for squads nationwide.
Weyen has said Bennington is one of only a few Vermont communities that don’t directly fund an ambulance service. The organization is the second largest EMS services provider in Vermont by call volume, he said, behind Burlington.
