Grafton Town Board Action – Open Governance For The Grafton Ambulance

by Alex Brooks
After complaints at last month’s Grafton Town Board meeting that interested citizens have been excluded from meetings of the Grafton Ambulance Squad, Town Supervisor Tyler Sawyer sought an opinion from the New York State Committee on Open Government about whether those meetings, by law, are required to be open to the public.
Robert Freeman, the Executive Director of the Committee, furnished several advisory opinions written by him saying that Ambulance Squad meetings must be open to the public and are required to comply with the Open Meetings Law and the Freedom of Information act.
The Ambulance is a not for profit corporation. Such corporations are not, in general, subject to the requirements of the Open Meetings Law. But the State’s highest court ruled, in a 1995 decision, that a volunteer ambulance corporation is subject to this law when it performs its duties solely for an ambulance district or a town. Apparently the logic is that if the ambulance is purchased and maintained at town expense and garaged in a town building at town expense, then the taxpayers have a right to know the details of the governance of such a publicly supported entity.
Supervisor Sawyer said the Town Board shouldn’t attempt to micromanage the Ambulance Squad, but it does need to keep an eye on how the Squad is being run to make sure the Town funds going into the ambulance are used properly for the benefit of the Town. His main concern seemed to be that meetings be open to anyone who is interested and that members of the squad be chosen on the basis of clearly stated qualifications rather than being influenced by personal considerations.
At public comment time Beth Wagar, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer of the Ambulance, also spoke on this topic. She had also had conversations with Freeman and learned that ambulance meetings are supposed to be open to the public. She said the Ambulance Squad’s operating procedures and by-laws need to be revised to make their governance more accessible to the public. She said to the thirty or so citizens present at the Town meeting, “This is your squad. Come to the meetings. We need to change this.”
She said the Ambulance Squad meetings are on the second Wednesday of the month at 7 pm.
Highway
Highway Superintendent Herb Hasbrouck said he has completed his applications for FEMA aid and he was told that FEMA will pay when projects are 70% completed, so the Town should be seeing some FEMA checks pretty soon.
The Town received a letter from Doug and Nancy La Rocque about what they described as “dangerous conditions” on Richmond Road. They said rocks and debris dug out of the Quacken Kill creek in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene have been piled up on the side of the road and are encroaching into the roadway, turning it effectively into a one lane road. They asked that the situation be addressed right away.
Town Actions
In response to a letter from Tommy Kiely, the Board passed a resolution saying it has no objection to the Grafton Trail Blazers using the Niagara Mohawk right of way near the Pittstown line as a snowmobile trail, as they have been doing for years.
The Board re-appointed Constance Alderman to the Grafton Board of Assessment Review for a five year term from now until September 30, 2016.
At the end of the meeting the Board went into an executive session to discuss “personnel and legal issues.”