Emergency Services: What is the public paying for?
Amherst, MA - March 7th, 2008
Recently, Amherst Town Manager Laurence Shaffer made a presentation to the Amherst Select Board asking them to take a "leap of faith" with him by stating that each emergency call responded to by the Amherst Fire Department has an equal dollar cost.
| Services Provided by AFD |
- 24 hour Emergency Management
- Emergency Medical Services
- Advanced Life Support
- Cardiac Monitoring
- Advanced Airway Management
- Trauma Life Support
- End of Life Care
- On-Scene Medical Care
- Education of At-Risk Residents
- Fire Protection
- Fire Extinguishment
- Search & Rescue
- Loss Minimization
- Pre-Incident Inspections
- Pre-Incident Planning
- Fire Investigation
- Pre-Incident Education
- Technical / Hazard
- Auto Extrication
- Confined Space Rescue
- High-Angle Rescue
- Hazardous Materials Response
- Air Quality Monitoring & Mitigation
- Public Education
- S.A.F.E. Program
- CPR Classes
- Annual Open House
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Amherst Firefighters Local 1764 rejects this "per call" model for calculating the cost of the service provided by the Fire Department. We believe the taxpayers should not feel that they are paying for the individual calls the Fire Department responds to. They are paying for the protection, as a whole, that the Fire Department provides to our community.
In the case of Amherst, the town pays for a minimum staffing of 7 firefighters on duty, 24 hours a day. All of Amherst's 44 career firefighters are EMT-Intermediates (13) or EMT-Paramedics (31). It takes a minimum of 3 firefighters to staff a fire engine, and a minimum of two firefighters (2 EMT-Ps or 1 EMT-P and 1 EMT-I) to staff a Paramedic level ambulance.
What the citizens in the communities we serve want (and deserve) is the knowledge that in the event of an emergency, trained professionals will respond. It is not the calls they pay for. They do not pay for the service because they plan to have a fire or medical emergency. Citizens pay for the protection provided by a professional force of firefighters and paramedics.
Town Manager Shaffer has used a different model. In his model, calls are analogous to products that are consumed, and the cost of each product is charged to the consumer. Select Board member Hwei-Ling Greeney compared the services of the Fire Department to "widgets". This ignores the reality that each call we respond to, Fire or Medical, is connected to real people who are members of our community. (View our Response Stats) They are not products. As one member of our Local put it "How much is your child worth to you? Everything in the world, right? That does not mean it is okay to charge you everything in the world for an Ambulance call."
We have another model for analyzing the economics of our Ambulance Service that we will be presenting to the Select Board on March 17th, but the important thing to remember is that Ambulance and Fire coverage are services provided to the Town. It is this protection that should form our starting point for analysis, not a "per call cost."
- Amherst Firefighters
Local 1764
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