The McDowell Memo: Emergency Services dropping out of our ability to sustain

Emergency Services dropping out of our ability to sustain 

As many of you know for the last 10 years I have railed against government imposing training standards and equipment standards on small and rural Fire Depts and Emergency / Ambulance Services. We now know see the impact of those increasingly restrictive regulations on local communities in Upstate New York. Many small areas have stopped providing EMS and the slack has had to be taken up by adjoining communities. In some cases the communities have gone to charging which if the medical insurance industry would lower the co pays to a reasonable amount might be somewhat sustainable. But, they haven't and I assume won't unless the state forces them to. On average the co pay is about $350 for basic and $500+ for Advanced care needs. If you are the poor senior citizen living on Social Security in a rural area this could mean the difference between paying the bill and eating for the month. 
Fire companys are not excluded from this issue with the amount of state required and OSHA required training for just a basic firefighter , the cost is over $1000 in most areas and requires a committment of weeks of training , time away from the family and sometimes the job. 

So what is the solution to keep our level of fire protection and emergency service quality at an acceptable level?  In essence no community under 30 to 35,000 people can afford to maintain present service levels at todays regulation costs . With the increased regulations proposed by the state and federal government even the cities will not be able to afford to staff and train the proper amount of staff. So how do we get that sort of revenue , it has to be at the county level of government. Sheriffs departments across the state have set the example, in the 1950's most had just jails to staff and civil processes to serve , with maybe a small hand full of deputies . By 2010 most counties in the state had large jails and large administration and had adequately staffed road patrols and investigative divisions, They had become the main law enforcement body in the county. The NYSP at the same time had grown dramatically and had become the main patrol body of the highways and rural areas of the state. Their investigative units were used as a lead group along with the Sheriffs investigators and local PD's detectives, they worked in a task force method for all major crimes. So, we must consolidate all of the Fire Departments into a county wide department with full time professional employees and a professional manager. The consolidation of equipment and services will save a large portion of the cost of having paid firefighters and EMT's. But the public must understand that there also has to be a county wide tax for Police services, Fire Services and Ambulance/ EMS services. We pay a tax to educate our children because we want the best education we can get for them. We also need to want and pay for the best protection for ourselves and our loved ones. There fore I recommend that the state set aside funds to study and consolidate police services into countywide police, fire depts into a county wide fire department and EMS into a county wide service. We should see savings by basing all 3 services in buildings properly designed to serve all 3 services. Volunteers can continue to serve the community as back ups to the paid staff and as fire police , etc. With the ability in pending legistlation to get a tax credit for fire and EMS volunteer service. This would require a single chief and several deputy chiefs for the Fire Dept. , Admininstration staff for the Police dept. and EMS. All of which should be under the County Director of Emergency Services. It might even be appropriate to have an Emergency services Commission with elected commissioners to ratify budgets , hiring , firing and impose a countywide tax. This would relieve the legislature of much of the day to day issues.

If we don't act soon , we will all start to see a dramatic drop in response times and quality of work. 
So lets urge the legistlature to start the process with an act to initiate a county study committee of fire, police, EMS , local government elected officials and finally a member of the local , business, medical, educational and non-profit communities and fund them to study this for a year and propose a solution for the county legislature to vote on. It is time to save our Emergency Service at the level that is safest for our families. 

https://www.ems1.com/volunteer-rural-ems/articles/is-rural-ems-on-life-support-tymEiznYup8fYrDb/