Temple’s disagreement with Wilton Ambulance over this year’s funding formula has come to a head, with Temple town officials now planning to let Town Meeting voters decide – stay with Wilton’s service or switch to the Peterborough ambulance.
The decision will lie solely with the Town Meeting voters, Temple Selectman Bill Ezell said during a joint meeting of the Select Board and Budget Committee on Thursday. Peterborough Fire & Rescue Chief Ed Walk attended the meeting at the request of the Temple town officials.
“The Select Board has not made a decision on this. Nor will we,” Ezell said.
No matter which service the town ultimately goes with, Ezell said, the town will have to move to amend its budget on the floor of Town Meeting. The exact amount of that budget amendment will either support the full cost of staying with Wilton, or switching to Peterborough.
Captain Luke Peterson of Temple’s fire service stressed during Thursday’s meeting that the town has not had any issue with the service Wilton ambulance has provided, and also praised improvements to the running of the department under its current chief, Steve Desrosiers. However, Budget Advisory Committee and Select Board members said they have been at odds with Wilton over the funding formula since the service added the town of Greenfield last year, and said they have been getting the raw end of the deal.
Budget Advisory Committee member John Kieley agreed, saying the town has been with the Wilton’s service for decades and hasn’t had an issue with the care provided.
“If it weren’t for this blip, we wouldn’t be here now,” he said.
Kieley referred to Temple as “subsidizing” Greenfield’s participation in the partnership for the past year.
Budget Chair Gary Scholl said he got the impression Temple was being “stonewalled” until after budgets passed during Town Meeting, leaving Temple with few options.
“We have a strong sense we’re not being dealt with fairly,” Scholl said.
When Greenfield joined the Wilton ambulance, the member towns – which include Temple, Wilton, Lyndeborough and now Greenfield – agreed to a short-term funding solution in which Wilton paid half the cost of the service, and the other three members covered the remaining cost in an even split. Once the service was able to establish numbers of calls for service for Greenfield, the formula would revert back to a formula based on that. However, this year, after Greenfield has been with the service a year, it is the contention of Temple town officials that the ambulance should enact the calls for service funding method, while Wilton wants to wait until there is more data.
Wilton Select Board member Kermit Williams said Monday that the inter-municipal agreement is “vague” on when the switch should happen. The instruction to continue using the current system came from the advisory board that manages the ambulance, which includes a Temple representative, Williams said.
Williams said he favors a system of payment based on call volume as well, and said he can see Temple’s side as both the smallest town, as well as the town with the fewest ambulance calls in the partnership. However, he said, making budget adjustments at this point would be difficult.
“Everyone’s budgets have already gone in,” he said.
But there’s also no clear solution if Temple pulls out.
“If Temple decides to leave, it’s going to get more expensive for everyone, and we’re going to have to figure out how to cover those costs,” Williams said.
The membership towns have gone back and forth on the funding issue, including a scheduled meeting last week which had to be canceled when a member town couldn’t attend. Now, Temple officials said they fear the issue won’t be resolved before Town Meeting.
Temple currently has budgeted $40,000 for their ambulance services – what they would be paying under a call-volume based system in Wilton. That’s $17,000 less than what Wilton has asked for.
Walker was at the meeting to speak about what moving services would look like for the town of Temple. The cost would be similar to Wilton’s current budget request. Peterborough charges its member towns based on a formula that takes into account both population and call volume. Based on 87 calls, which is the number of calls Temple had several years ago, Walker estimated a cost of $56,818. That number would be lower if based on last year’s numbers, when Temple only had 72 calls for service.
Walker said the Peterborough ambulance had not changed its staffing since the departure of Greenfield from the ambulance service, which took place at the end of 2018. And Greenfield had significantly more calls for service than Temple when Peterborough served them, he said. He said there would be no issue absorbing Temple into the service.
“If this is what you wanted, no one’s going to say no,” Walker said.
Peterborough ambulance is also almost exactly the same distance from the Temple center as Wilton’s ambulance service, and response times aren’t likely to be vastly different, Walker said.
The level of available care from both services is likely equivalent, Walker said, but Peterborough has a larger staff, is staffed full-time while Wilton staffs its station from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., with the evenings covered by on-call personnel. Peterborough keeps enough staff to fully staff two ambulances, and has on-call members ready to staff a third if needed, he said.
Ezell said the decision would be left to the voters, and that either choice would require the budget to be amended during March Town Meeting.
Temple’s Town Meeting is scheduled for March 14, starting at 10 a.m., at the Temple Elementary School.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.