I am happy to report that there will be a joint town and village of Chester work session on the EMS contract proposals and tax district this upcoming Wednesday, September 4, at 3:30 p.m. This meeting will be held at the Chester Town Hall but will also be available on YouTube, Facebook Live, and on the Town of Chester website as always.
This is a good opportunity to explain the current situation as well as our next moves. Since we lost our volunteer ambulance in the past, we have had a handshake deal with Mobile Life (now Empress EMS, after their acquisition of Mobile Life) where they station an ambulance in Chester, but that ambulance can be called anywhere in Orange County at any time. Your taxes do not pay for this ambulance. It is not dedicated to Chester. This has led to unacceptable response times for emergency calls in our town. That is why I ran on obtaining a dedicated EMS contract for Chester. Your health and safety should come first. It has been my number one goal since entering office.
A lot of work has gone into the request for proposal process that we are currently in. It took guidance from Assemblymember Maher, the NYSDOH, our town attorney, and our town engineer. Although we are now nine months into the year, a great amount of work, research, and time was required to get us to where we are. We are moving at a very high pace for a complicated process like this. We received three proposals for contracts. Two are current providers of ambulance services, Empress EMS and Blooming Grove Ambulance. The third, Michael Bigg of New Windsor EMS, is an independent consultant that is offering to help us build our own town-controlled, paid ambulance service like he recently did in Waywayanda.
The town and village boards of Chester will be discussing which proposal works best for everyone. Once we have a decision, we will file a map plan and report to Orange County to create a new tax district that will go into effect in 2025. To be clear, a new (relatively nominal) tax will be created for everyone who lives in Chester. This is absolutely necessary in order to get a quality ambulance service. Just remember that you get what you pay for. You pay for police and fire emergency services and get excellent service for it. You currently do not pay for EMS and hence the unacceptable response times that could lead to avoidable catastrophic situations. At the same time as the map plan and report filing, I will work with the NYSDOH to obtain the necessary certifications to have the new ambulance contract. This will complete the process and our new ambulance service, whatever it may be, will be good to go.
Please feel free to attend the upcoming meeting. Please feel free to reach out to my office with any of your questions. I’m always willing to talk about this with you. Everyone should be on the same page about this important issue. I look forward to working with the rest of our local elected leaders to get us the ambulance service we deserve.
Brandon Holdridge, Supervisor
Town of Chester
bholdridge@thetownofchester.org; 845-469-7000, ext. 2