Newtown Rescue Squad Asks Township To Place Funding Question On Ballot

NEWTOWN TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Newtown Township took the first step Wednesday night to
place a question on the November ballot that will ask voters whether they support increasing taxes to help fund the Newtown Rescue Squad.

After hearing a request for the referendum from Newtown Rescue Squad Chief Evan Resnikoff, the Board of Supervisors directed its solicitor to draft language for a question to appear on the November ballot.

The question would ask voters whether they favor increasing the ambulance squad millage rate from .5 mills to 1.0 mills of tax, which equates to $43.60 a year on the average township tax bill or about $3.63 a month.

“This is a small amount of money to guarantee that you will have an ambulance at your door,” said Resnikoff, noting that in some parts of the county the EMS system is failing and people are waiting 15 to 20 minutes.

The chief said the increase is projected to support the squad for the next four to six years without an additional need for taxes.

The squad currently receives a half mill in taxes from township taxpayers. That is the cap in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania without going to a public referendum. That gives the squad about $171,000 annually, which equates to about $21.80 a year for the average taxpayer.

“That breaks down to about $1.81 a month to the average homeowner to pay for EMS services,” said Resnikoff. “That doesn’t even pay for a half a gallon of gas these days. And you get a highly functional, 24 hour a day, 365 days a year EMS agency for $1.81 a month.”

Like squads throughout the state, Resnikoff said the Newtown unit is feeling the pinch of inflation coupled with a funding model that no longer works.

Since 1999 Resnikoff said EMS in Newtown and the rest of Bucks County has transitioned from volunteer to mostly career, but what hasn’t changed is the funding model.

“When EMS was largely volunteer, it was okay to rely on fund drives, on fundraisers and insurance revenue,” said Resnikoff. “But now that we all have payrolls, like any other emergency service, we can’t solely rely on fundraisers and reimbursements from the insurance companies. It’s a very unstable model,” he said.

Resnikoff said fortunately the squad has a revenue stream, so it doesn’t need to be 100 percent funded from the tax base like other emergency services, including fire and police, “but bear in mind that EMS, in the township code, is defined as an essential service,” he told the supervisors.

Up until this year, the squad supported its EMS operations through its transport service. Earlier this year, however, the squad was forced to shutdown the service, which had funded the EMS side of its operations for the past 25 years.

“We realized last summer that due to the attrition rate of EMS personnel we would not be able to staff it. The routine transport division subsided the EMS division, but we knew it wasn’t going to meet its obligations so we had a planned shutdown as of Feb. 1,” said Resnikoff. “And for the
first time in 25 years we became an EMS only operation. We went from a staff of 86 to 49.”

The squad, he said, is currently running a shortfall of $68,644 year to date. “It sounds like a scary number. It’s something to be concerned about, however we know we have other revenue coming in such as the other portion of our tax revenue from this year and some grants.”

According to Resnikoff, whether the squad runs 100, 1000 or 10,000 calls a year the hourly cost to staff the service does not change.

“Our hourly cost in Newtown Township is the same as it would be in Nockamixon or Bensalem Township. That cost to be at the ready, 24 hours a day is not covered by our insurance reimbursement,” he said. “The slow nights that the guys have when they are not on calls, we still have to be here. We’re expected by the community to be here 24 hours a day. Our EMS license requires us to be staffed at our highest level 24 hours a day. If we were to fall below 100 percent they could come take our license.”

The Newtown squad has been fortunate, said the chief, registering no out of service time this year. “The services around us - St. Mary EMS, Pendell-Middletown and Yardley-Makefield EMS - have all had outages where they either downgraded a unit to BLS (Basic Life Support) or they only had one person to cover a community. We’ve been fortunate because we have a dedicated staff. But that’s only going to go so far. We need better support from tax revenue in order to maintain salary at a level that we can retain the staff we have.”

Newtown paramedics currently earn between $2 and $4 an hour less than their peers, said Resnikoff. “Our EMTs are $8 to $10 an hour less than their peers. And looking at other municipalities, they are supporting their EMS organizations at a much higher tax rate than we are here in Newtown Township.”

“We’re requesting this to solidify our future,” Resnikoff told the supervisors. “We are certainly not hand to mouth. We’re doing okay, but to maintain okay and do better than okay we need this,” he said of the millage increase.

“We’re starting a new project this summer,” he continued. “We’re getting a new roof for $64,000. That’s a major, major capital expense. We can’t avoid it. It’s going to come out of our savings to do that.”

After listening to Resnikoff’s presentation and reviewing the squad’s budget, Supervisor Elen Snyder remarked, “You’re literally working on a shoestring budget.”

When asked by the supervisors if they will also be seeking additional funding from other municipalities served by the squad, the chief said he would.

“That one mill will help us with what we have to do here. We are not finished with the other municipalities,” said Resnikoff.