5 min read

WATERVILLE — City councilors delayed taking an initial vote on a proposed $64.8 million municipal and school budget Tuesday after debating at length about whether to hire more emergency medical personnel to staff a third ambulance.

Councilors said it was an agonizing decision, whether to raise property taxes or leave the fire department without adequate staffing to run ambulances to hospitals, particularly when the only inpatient hospital in the city is closing for good this month.

Hiring the staff for the next fiscal year would cost the city $601,000, they said, and it is unclear how much money would be required for the years after that. Eight new hires would be needed to staff a third ambulance in four shifts although officials acknowledged the hiring would have to be staggered, as recruiting all eight at once would be unlikely.

“I just want to begin by saying this is not a difficult decision — it’s an impossible one,” Council Chair Rebecca Green, D-Ward 4, said.

Waterville Mayor Mike Morris Amy Calder/Morning Sentinel

The council voted 3-3 to table until June 3 taking a first vote on the proposed budget, with Green and councilors Brandon Gilley, D-Ward 1, and Spencer Kringbaum, D-Ward 5, voting for the delay. The Ward 6 seat is currently vacant. Mayor Mike Morris broke the tie in favor of tabling. He said the council could then take a second, final vote June 17.

Green said the fire department’s call volume is rising and the need for putting its third ambulance on the road is needed, but the city doesn’t have the money to pay for it, because Medicare is the primary funder and the city isn’t getting that money because it is being cut. On the flip side, she said, the city is being asked to pay for a much larger problem created by forces beyond its control.

Advertisement

“We have to look at what the taxpayers can afford,” she said.

Taxpayers, she said, are also funding ambulance service for people in the city who don’t live here but may work in Waterville or travel here, which is unfair. She recommended the council wait to decide on staffing the ambulance and try to find a regional solution and not just ask Waterville to pick up the tab.

“I just see this as a moment where it’s a crisis point and we have to say wait a minute — we can’t do this, especially in this environment where we have so many risks from funding being cut…”

Fire Chief Jason Frost has repeatedly urged the council to support the increased staffing and to fund the third ambulance, which Waterville already owns and is ready to be put into service. With Northern Light Inland Hospital closing, the department expects to take patients to Augusta between 800 and 1,000 times a year, he said.

The department uses only two ambulances and with increasing calls, both are commonly in service, with no option for a third when a call comes in other than to call Delta Ambulance and hope it has an available ambulance. Winslow is the only other nearby department with a licensed ambulance.

Frost said his staff is overworked and tired and he worries both about keeping Waterville residents safe and his department employees facing burnout.

Advertisement

City officials say they want the city to grow — for housing to be developed and for more people to come to live in Waterville — and the department must grow with those changes, Frost said. He said he knows funding more staff is a “massive ask,” but Waterville is the seventh busiest department in Maine with half the staff and fewer ambulances than other communities its size.

“If we don’t start growing with the city, we will be behind the eight ball,” he said.

Councilor Brandon Gilley, D-Ward 1 Michael G. Seamans/Morning Sentinel

Krigbaum and Gilley agreed that deciding whether to staff an ambulance to respond to people’s medical needs versus raising taxes and possibly pricing people out of their homes was extremely difficult. Krigbaum said councilors were stuck between a rock and a hard place, and he was weighing increasing taxes against the possibility of someone’s being left on the street in cardiac arrest.

“Either way, we lose,” he said. “There’s no winning this. It’s, either we lose the ambulance side or we lose people’s houses.”

Krigbaum suggested tabling the budget vote until the council could obtain more details about the financial picture if the city hires more staff. Gilley said he understands the need for adequate staffing, but he also has received calls from constituents about the budget and the cost of hiring more people.

“We don’t have the money — we just don’t,” Gilley said.

Advertisement

He said every other city department came in with no large funding requests and the schools came in with no requested increase.

“I get that it’s difficult, but I can’t vote yes when the majority of my constituents are really quite fearful of what this will turn out to be,” he said.

Councilor Cathy Herard, D-Ward 7, said she doesn’t want her taxes to go up, but one can’t put a price tag on the service the fire department provides. In emotional testimony, Herard recounted her experience of needing an ambulance in the middle of the night 1 1/2 months ago and said she is grateful for the emergency medical workers and the compassion they showed her.

“I just want to point out the fact that these are people that we are expecting to do this kind of work,” she said. “They are not machines.”

Councilor Flavia DeBrito, D-Ward 2, also urged the council to support the increased staffing, saying when she moved to Waterville 10 years ago her vehicle was struck head on by an SUV and she had her children, ages 5, 6 and 7 with her. The city did not have an ambulance service then and the tow truck that responded ferried her and her children to their home, she said. She said her then-5-year-old still suffers from the effects of a concussion from the accident.

“I don’t want Waterville to take steps back to when we first got here,” DeBrito said.

Councilor Thomas Klepach, D-Ward 3, said the tax rate is important but having a safe city with good schools where families can flourish is the first thing he thinks of as a parent. He would be willing to do a spread sheet showing median and mean values of homes and estimated tax increases homeowners would face if the city hires ambulance staff. He called the decision councilors had to make “agonizing.”

“Nobody wants people to die,” he said. “Nobody wants to push people out of their homes. We’re stuck. There is no one right answer.”

Klepach said, however, that he wanted to err on the side of supporting first responders so they are able to do their jobs.

Amy Calder covers Waterville, including city government, for the Morning Sentinel and writes a column, “Reporting Aside,” which appears Sundays in both the Sentinel and Kennebec Journal. She has worked...

Join the Conversation

Please sign into your CentralMaine.com account to participate in conversations below. If you do not have an account, you can register or subscribe. Questions? Please see our FAQs.