PUTNEY — On Thursday, May 22, the town of Putney will be holding a Special Town Meeting to call a re-vote of its budget.
At the heart of this re-vote is the question of whether the town should continue to partner with Rescue Inc. for ambulance services.
Although this issue was discussed and voted on at the Annual Town Meeting in March, recommending the Selectboard reaffirm Putney's relationship with Rescue Inc., a recent petition circulated in the town and acquired 85 signatures asking for a reconsideration.
First, I would like to make it explicitly clear that I have no complaint against Golden Cross. I have no doubt that it is a professionally run organization efficiently providing ambulance service to towns in both New Hampshire and Vermont.
There appear to be two main factors cited by proponents of a split from Rescue Inc. as reasons to contract with Golden Cross instead.
The first is financial. Rescue Inc. is charging each town it covers $58,000 per year, and Golden Cross has said it will charge $22,000 less, at $36,000 per year.
The second factor seems to have been management issues at Rescue.
I recently asked Drew Hazelton, chief of operations at Rescue Inc., about these two factors.
Drew noted it is important for the townspeople of Putney to realize that Rescue Inc. has been serving the town since 1966. For 48 years, Rescue has been building a tremendous depth of service. The organization now has 56 staff members, including paramedics who all have at least five to 10 years of experience on the force.
Rescue staffs four ambulances every day. The EMTs and paramedics are very well trained. The unparalleled quality they offer is evident to any physician who has ever worked in the BMH emergency department.
Rescue Inc. hosts community education, and it offers charitable care and a subscription service, making ambulance transfer much more affordable for the elderly, for chronically ill persons, and for the uninsured and underinsured. It is able to do so because it operates as a nonprofit organization. (Golden Cross is for-profit.)
It would be difficult, if not impossible, for any newer ambulance service to compete with what Rescue has to offer.
What about the $22,000 in savings to the town of Putney?
This amounts to a savings of $1.50 to $5 per year per household depending on property value.
If Putney withdraws from the community alliance of 15 towns that now contract with Rescue, then not only will Rescue lose the $58,000 in the contract fee, it also loses about $100,000 in reimbursements from calls to Putney.
This means that next year, the other 14 towns will have to share the $158,000 shortfall, an increase of more than $11,000 each to those towns.
So Putney's costs go down, but everyone else's go up. Most of these other towns do not have a Golden Cross to consider contracting with. There are no other options for them.
Drew also explained the reorganization of management at Rescue, Inc.
There used to be a chief financial officer who operated independently from the chief of operations. Those positions have now been consolidated into Drew's position as chief.
The financial oversight is provided by a finance committee of the board of directors, made up of local area bankers. An action plan is now in place to allow for organizational growth while restricting costs so that all towns may benefit from decreased costs within the next year or two.
Rescue is well on its way with this plan, having operated for the past 10 months in the black with a solvent, balanced budget.
I would like to call on the residents of Putney to think beyond just our town, as what we do will affect everyone else. Please realize that to keep Rescue Inc. strong and allow it to keep providing a high level of service to all the towns in southeastern Vermont, we must remain part of this community effort.
I ask each household in Putney to send at least one representative to the Special Town Meeting.
Please show your support for keeping Putney part of this valuable community resource. It is really worth much more than the few dollars per year it costs each one of us.