Ambulance Service A Rising Concern
by Thaddeus Flint
Ambulances might someday be slower to arrive in Stephentown, but there could be plenty of worthless television channels to flip through while waiting, it was heard at last Tuesday’s Town Board meeting.
“The local Fire Department is seriously considering getting out of the ambulance service,” Councilman Bill Jennings reported at the January 21 meeting. At a recent workshop meeting with Stephentown Fire Department officials, it was heard that the ambulance service offered to the Town by the Stephentown Volunteer Fire Department is becoming close to unsustainable in the current form. “They really do not have enough trained EMTs or drivers,” added Jennings.
While the Fire Department is required to provide emergency service to the Town, they are not required to operate the ambulance service. It’s a service the SVFD wanted to provide to residents. And that worked well when residents were also working with the Fire Department. It’s a problem that is facing not just Stephentown, but towns all across the State–and much of the entire Country–as training times increase while people’s free time decreases. Add to that equation less businesses in rural areas, and younger people moving toward cities faster than ever, and towns are left with less people to answer the calls.
While the good news is that there are fewer fire calls each year, “those old houses already burned down,” said Councilman Jennings, the bad news is that emergency calls are going up due to such factors as aging populations in rural areas and increasingly erratic weather patterns. Stephentown now only has two EMTs. When the amount of time—all unpaid—is taken into consideration it’s amazing there are that many. Jennings, who was himself an EMT for years, pointed out that EMTs need to put in 180 hours just to be certified. And then each call is “going to take three hours,” added the Councilman. With around 250 calls a year, 90% of which are EMS calls, a single EMT could be looking at over thirty 24-hour days of unpaid service. Jennings said that if people would stop calling for an ambulance because “the kid has an earache” and other such nonsense, that would help. But unless more residents decide to volunteer, SVFD is probably going to drop its ambulance. Townspeople will still get first responders to show up if they call 911, but those calls that really need an EMT would take longer as an ambulance is dispatched from Albany or Troy. And be prepared to pay too. Ambulance rides to the hospital could run around $600 and most insurance companies apparently would prefer if you walked because they rarely cover all of it.
At some point, “Rensselaer County has to step in,” said Jennings. “Having each individual town operating an ambulance is just not possible anymore.” One solution is to look toward shared services with possibly Berlin since New Lebanon uses Chatham Rescue as its ambulance provider. Either way it’s a problem and it’s “growing,” said the Councilman.
The problem with not having enough channels on the television set, however, might soon be solved. At just around 70 years after cable television was born, Stephentown might someday in the very near future get to experience the thrill of paying for, as Bruce Springsteen pointed out in 1992, “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On).” The number of nothing is now closer to 500, but Consolidated Communication believes they are up to the challenge of getting every one of them to residents as long as the residents send Consolidated money each month. How much money? That’s still unknown, said Councilman Jerry Robinson, but Stephentown could even decide to add a tax to the nothing and make revenue. Money for nothing! “It’s entirely up to you,” said Carol McTague of the New York State Department of Public Service. McTague has been helping Jennings navigate the complexities of initiating a franchise agreement for cable TV between Stephentown and Consolidated. New York State recently gave Consolidated millions of taxpayer dollars to bring fiber optic cable to rural places like Stephentown that should have already had it because taxpayers already paid years ago to do the same thing. All that’s left really is for the Town to send a letter off to the Public Service Commission detailing that they have completed all other needed aspects to begin negotiations. As the other cable company in the area, Spectrum/Charter has shown no interest in wiring up the Town, the PSC could expedite the franchise faster than probably anyone would ever assume a government entity could do anything at all. “I will be with you guys every step of the way,” said McTague.
Because the date of the meeting fell on Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, Town Supervisor Larry Eckhardt shared some words of Dr. King at the beginning of the night he felt to be representative of the times we all live in today. “It’s not the actions of the bad people that we should be concerned about,” quoted the Supervisor. “It’s the inactions of the good people.” Eckhardt then added: “So, it’s good to have good people here tonight.”