“Following more than a decade without town funding, the Rotterdam Emergency Medical Services squad is on the verge of financial collapse, prompting concerns about disrupting an emergency response system that has faced increased strain in recent years.
Dean Romano, director of Rotterdam EMS, or REMS, said without town support, the 50-person squad that responds to around 4,000 calls annually will be forced to curtail services or cease operations entirely by the end of next year. He’s hoping the town will allocate the struggling service $400,000 as part of its 2023 budget and establish a special tax district to fund the service permanently beginning in 2024.
“I think in late 2023 it’s going to become a major crisis,” Romano said. “We will have depleted our reserves, and at that point, we’ll be reducing services or whatever we have to do to just sustain the operation.”
Financial struggles are nothing new for REMS, which has a yearly operating budget of $1.7 million and can be traced back to a more than the decade-old decision that saw town officials opt to no longer fund the service. The decision sparked a fierce debate about the future of ambulance services in town that ultimately saw REMS continue to operate on a fee-for-service basis.”
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Arnod, Chad. EMS1 12 October 2022.