Dec 21, 2024
Proposed revenues are much higher than actual revenues for the village’s ambulance service.
The Fredonia Fire Department and its chief Josh Myers took some flak this month for overbudgeting of ambulance revenue.
Trustee Michelle Twichell and Police Chief David Price both criticized the practice at a special Fredonia Board of Trustees meeting last week to discuss the village’s budget problems. The village is close to running out of money by year’s end.
“We sit here today because we’re exploring basically where to cut money, in an effort to rectify a budget year that we’re only six months into,” Price said. “The ambulance service was created as a revenue generator. There used to be five full time firemen. The ambulance service was created with the additional revenue promising to pay for those additional members to be paid firemen — so that’s why when you see these budgets created, as the last one, anticipated revenue pays for those salaries.”
He added, “Now that the revenue doesn’t come in as anticipated, there’s a shortfall on the ambulance side. … And we sit here today looking at other departments to fill in that gap and we have been stripped thin over the last 25, 30 years. This (fire) department wasn’t always paramedics, it was EMTs. It wasn’t paramedics, that has changed over the last couple years. So this hasn’t been a 30-year cycle of things, this has been the last four or five years, and we find ourselves here today because the revenue that was promised as anticipated doesn’t come in as expected.”
Myers defended his department to Price. “The paramedics, the career guys there that worked 30 years ago, were paramedics. … Staffing levels might have changed, but again that was before my time,” Myers said.
Price spoke late in the meeting, after Twichell stated that a profit-loss review of the fire department showed a $602,000 shortfall.
“It’s pretty clear to me that the fire department is the one that needs to be looked at,” Twichell said.
“The fire department is way overspending,” she added. “Their projections have been high for the past few years for the ambulance service. I think we have to take a realistic look at that because that money just was not there.”
“The budget that we’re looking at now is the one that we passed,” Trustee Jon Espersen said. “This is us, we’re responsible for it.”
“I’d like to remind you I was against some of those increases and no one agreed with me,” Twichell replied.
Trustee Nicole Siracuse directly questioned Myers about his department’s ambulance service billing. The billing company “is doing great. I asked what we ran the last 12 months and that number as of (Thursday) is $551,334,” Myers said. “Where we’re struggling is our revenue recovery, our collections agency. They’ve billed out like $98,000 and recovered $11,000. With the law changes, I don’t see it improving. … The inability for them to put it on people’s credit report, it’s going to pick up steam.”
The fire chief added, “It comes down to, what is the level of care (that) we want to provide this community. If this answer, which it has been for over 30 years, is advanced life support, then it costs money — it costs a lot of money to be a paramedic agency.”
Myers seemed to question the profit-loss number that Twichell reported, a figure calculated by Village Treasurer Erlyssa LeBeau.
He said that the fire department had $1.587 million in budgeted revenue, but with the actual EMS figure he quoted and $489,000 from a service contract with the town of Pomfret, “That makes our true operating cost $495,000. So I think we’re looking at different things.
“I talked to Erlyssa … and the bond for new trucks is included. OK, rightfully so. You’re going to pay whether we’re a career department or volunteer department, we have to buy trucks… I think there’s a misconnect on what I’m seeing. I get that the EMS revenue and the town of Pomfret money goes into checking, but that’s revenue from the services we’re providing.”
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