Editorial: Smooth transition
Shelter Island has relied on the devotion, dedication and skill of its local all-volunteer ambulance corps for generations. They have trained, stood by and responded at all hours of the day and night to help Islanders in distress.
Nothing has changed about that. The same good people still stand ready to respond. The town takeover of the corps has had no effect on its mission, its membership or the most visible aspect of its operation: answering calls for help.
The town agreed to take over the corps because the Red Cross last year decided it was an organizational oddity and the time had come to let it go. The organization ran no other ambulance corps anywhere in the country.
There has been some grumbling that a transfer to the Fire District wasn’t seriously explored. Could it have been done cheaper somehow? Would it have made more sense administratively and operationally?
The Red Cross chose to approach the town after a careful review of its options. The Town Board conducted negotiations with the national organization in good faith; that meant keeping those talks in confidence. Now that the corps is a stable, functional and properly funded department of municipal government, it may make sense to give the Fire District option some public consideration. But changing things again down the road would be highly problematic. The town owns the corps and its assets now; under the law, it can’t just give them away.
With no signs of dissatisfaction among residents and ambulance volunteers and committee members, and only a few hints of it among fire personnel and officials, there’s a gut feeling that a relationship with the town is a good fit for the newly renamed Shelter Island Town Emergency Medical Service.
The town has full-time administrative staff to help handle all the details; there isn’t one at the Center firehouse. Town officials are set up for managing a large roster of employees; the unpaid fire commissioners are busy handling a steady load of administrative, infrastructural and financial issues. They directly manage only a handful of part-time contractors and employees and they rely on the Fire Department chiefs to manage the department’s all-volunteer membership.
One thing the Fire District does offer that the town does not — yet: a state-regulated, voter-approved Length of Service Award Program, funded by taxpayers, to help recruit new volunteers and encourage those in service to stay.
The town is preparing to ask voters to approve a similar program for its EMS volunteers. The program, unlike the Fire District’s, would include a “prior service” credit and has been estimated to cost about $95,000 a year for its first five years and then decline significantly.
After all these years of getting a free ride to hospital — and relying entirely on donations to cover the costs — the town’s taxpayers should commit themselves to the same kind of modest reward program they wisely granted fire department members seven years ago.
