The Town of Rochester Town Board held the public hearing on local law # 10-2022: Board of Ambulance Commissioners, Rochester Ambulance District on December 1, 2022, at 6:30pm at the Harold Lipton Community Center, 15 Tobacco Road, Accord, NY 12404.
PRESENT:
Councilman Michael Coleman Councilwoman Erin Enouen
Councilman Adam Paddock Councilwoman Charlotte Smiseth
Town Supervisor Michael Baden Deputy Town Clerk Christina Ferrara
ABSENT:
Town Clerk Kathleen Gundberg
Supervisor Baden called the meeting to order and led in the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.
PUBLIC HEARING OPEN TO THE PUBLIC- PUBLIC COMMENT:
Joe Vitti regarding Marbletown First Aide: Everyone works hard to have close working relationships; our goals are the same. Which is to get ambulances to sick and injured people to the hospital as quickly as possible. Having some experience with this, is that having a duty crew in the building should be the goal 24/ 7. In Marbletown, there was concern, about the pressure tax dollars creates, but in the end the community was for it knowing that there’s a pair of qualified people in the building. I would just encourage everyone across the board to be focused on that and to be making that a goal.
David Linscott: 24/7 is great, but what about that backup call? We can’t put two crews on, the way it used to work with mutual aid, everybody helped one another.
This staffing 24 hours a day is pushing the volunteers right out. Nobody should be left unattended to, missing one call is not acceptable. So, if there is that one person either injured or sick; if we don’t get to them, then to Marbletown, Kerhonkson, Ellenville,
we’d look bad in their eyes if we didn’t get out. I think we need to go back to mutual aid where everybody works together.
Shirley Avery: Seems to me that if we have two boards for the same group of
people with the amount of funding; it would make more sense to let them
go over and run their squad their way, run their money their way, and leave us
to have quarterly reports instead of confusion between two boards overseeing
that little bit of money it’s not like it’s a huge amount of money.
Bea Haugen-DePuy: I’m guessing they have five members, could the Town appoint two members keep it an odd number from the Town of Rochester they would accept that? What I want to know is why is this set up so differently from the fire company? It’s all taxpayer dollars, why is this not going to referendum and why do we not vote? Because if the taxpayers are paying, they should be saying who they want on their board. I say this because I’m representing myself as a taxpayer. I don’t want to be misconstrued as representing anything else.
He who does the paying does the saying, and then the taxpayers do the paying for this they should have the right to choose.
Beth Anderson: I understand this to be the compliance issue that when we form an ambulance improvement district, we
form it under Municipal law and the towns MUST comply with the New York State Comptroller and appoint the advisory boards.
This is very different than fire districts which form under Fire law, which are they’re sovereign, they decide their budgets they implement
their budgets. The towns have no say, no say whatsoever. This is an Improvement District, so the way that it works, and its authorities are drawn from a different source code, a law code, fire law versus improvement district Municipal law.
The Town of Marbletown appointed a tax Advisory Board they called tax Advisory Board it doesn’t run the Marbletown first aid unit at all; and neither would this board that’s being appointed by the town. It would not run the Kerhonkson/Accord First Aid Squad. KFAS, the First Aid Squad is its own business. The object of a tax Advisory Board is to review the budget, look for compliance with whatever contract is set up between the town and the vendor. It’s not running the business of ambulance and so when we use this word “commissioner”, people are familiar in the public with what a commissioner is in the fire department. This is very different in an improvement district in The Advisory board. It’s one of these intricacies of Municipal law that’s a little difficult for the public to understand because they don’t see it too often and appointing this Advisory Board is a very good way to watch the taxpayer dollars and that’s its purpose.
Bea Haugen-DePuy: Is Ms. Anderson our new counsel?
Mike Baden: No, she’s a member of the public. She’s been very involved with the Marbletown First Aide unit in the formation of their District. The Accord Fire district and the Kerhonkson Fire district are independent government agencies formed under New York state law. They are their own taxing district, they create their budget, they supply it to the town because the town, for convenience collects at tax time, collects town tax, county tax, fire taxes and any special improvement district taxes. Supervisor Baden explained the procedure and difference of fire districts and EMS
Shirley Avery: Volunteers are a thing of the past anymore we all know that. What’s going to happen with this advisory board when the squad comes and says, we’re closing our doors we can’t be volunteer anymore. Then the Board of Commissioners will be vote on and it will all change totally then, right?
Supervisor Baden: No because EMS under New York state is not like fire districts. Just like the Board created a district, the board can also dissolve a district at any time. If we end up with all paid, then we just developed the district which for right now, this is for one year.
CLOSURE OF THE PUBLIC HEARING:
Resolution # 460-2022:
A Motion was made by Councilman Coleman to close the public hearing on proposed local law. 10-2022.
Second: Councilman Paddock
motion carried
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
KATHLEEN A. GUNDBERG
TOWN CLERK
The Town of Rochester Town Board held the public hearing on local law # 11-2022: Board of Ambulance Commissioners, High Falls Ambulance District on December 1, 2022, at 6:30pm at the Harold Lipton Community Center, 15 Tobacco Road, Accord, NY 12404.
PRESENT:
Councilman Michael Coleman Councilwoman Erin Enouen
Councilman Adam Paddock Councilwoman Charlotte Smiseth
Town Supervisor Michael Baden Deputy Town Clerk Christina Ferrara
ABSENT:
Town Clerk Kathleen Gundberg
Supervisor Baden called the meeting to order and led in the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.
PUBLIC HEARING OPEN TO THE PUBLIC- PUBLIC COMMENT:
No additional comments.
CLOSURE OF THE PUBLIC HEARING:
Resolution # 461-2022:
A Motion was made by Councilwoman Smiseth to close the public hearing at 7:13pm.
Second: Councilwoman Enouen
Aye: nay: abstain: motion carried
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
KATHLEEN A. GUNDBERG
TOWN CLERK