Town that disbanded Volunteer EMTs now facing $5 million budget shortfall

Last Wednesday the Town of Chester, NY reportedly “Fired” its volunteer EMTs. But in less than a week the town of Chester realized there may be a cost in doing so. Budget forecasts based on only a week of contracting with a full time paramedic company show that Chester could face a major budget shortfall.

Ambulance

Town gets rid of volunteers but now is paying a high price.

About $5 million is what one accountant working at city hall told us is what he expects the city will be in debt for. Town officials never took into account all the extra costs not working with their local volunteers would add to the budget.

“In this first week alone we are facing over a $150k in billable expenses to the company we contracted with. Uninsured medical transports, hourly wages for multiple paramedics to be sitting on post, mileage for sending a backup ambulance to our town when the primary rig is on a call, wages for the backup paramedics, in addition the new contractor needs three new ambulances. Also this new company now needs to hire a bunch of new paramedics, so until that happens the hourly wages we are paying is at the overtime rate.”

The town made the change from volunteer service to a new full time contract service with little warning. This rapid change may be what is to blame for the expected budget fiasco.

“Please don’t use my name… but… obviously the town council and supervisor made a snap decision without actually doing any research as to impact. Oh… they try and tell the media that they took months to come to this decision… but clearly they did not. They jumped into a contract with some big company and did not read the fine print. Something that now will cost all the tax payers.”

The city finance department is preaching a major budget fiasco. Yet others at city hall are hoping that everything will work out OK. Our source is not sure it will ever even out.

“We got people saying it is nothing but growing pains. Yeah we have to drop a few bucks this week, but in the long run this contract with a private EMS provider will be better for us. Trust me on this one… by the end of the year city hall will be holding a dam bake sale trying to pay off the debt to this EMS Company.”

No one from the town supervisor’s office was willing to go on the record with us. Emails to the private EMS provider have thus far gone unanswered. We will continue to cover this story as events unfold.

About Staff

The staff at the CallTheCops are all people who now or at one time did work as police, firefighters, in EMS and even dispatch.