Voters In Newtown Township Asked To Increase Taxes For Rescue Squad

NEWTOWN TOWNSHIP, PA — There’s a lot riding on the outcome of the November election in Newtown Township.

In addition to voting for a number of state and national office holders, township voters will be deciding whether to approve or reject an additional half mill in real estate taxes to fund the Newtown Ambulance Squad.

The increase being sought would boost the average tax bill for Emergency Medical Services (EMS) from $21.80 to $43.60 a year, 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 Newtown Rescue Squad Chief Evan Resnikoff.

According to the chief, the increase is projected to support the squad for the next four to six years without an additional need for new taxes.

If the referendum is voted down, Resnikoff said the squad may not be able to meet its obligation as a 24 hour a day operation due to a lack of funding and personnel.

"If we don't get the funding, I don't think we will be able to function beyond three years," said Resnikoff. "And it will be a very rough three years. Staff will leave because we won't be able to pay them what they can earn elsewhere. Between revenue and staffing, those two critical functions would fail and the organization won't be able to remain in place."

If that happens, the township would either have to contract with another agency or run its own service, both of which Resnikoff said would be far more costly than the $21.80 increase per year being requested by the squad on the November ballot.

The squad currently receives a half mill in taxes, which is the cap placed on EMS providers in Pennsylvania without going to a public referendum. That half mill provides the squad with $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 day a year EMS agency.”

Like squads throughout the state, Resnikoff said the Newtown unit is feeling the pinch of inflation coupled with an insurance 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, which no
longer cover the cost of operation,” he said.

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

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 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 subsidized 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.”

According to Resnikoff, whether the squad runs 100, 1000 or 10,000 calls a year the hourly cost to staff the service 24 hours a day 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 there are no calls, we still have to be here and there are still salaries to be paid. 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 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 (increase) to solidify our future,” Resnikoff told the supervisors in August. “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.

The tax increase would be used to boost salaries to a more competitive level, to recruit personnel and to plug the gap between 24 hour a day staffing and insurance reimbursement.

According to Resnikoff, the public is invited to attend an open house at the rescue squad on Saturday, November 3 from 5 to 7 p.m. to inspect the station, view its equipment and ask questions. The station is located at 2651 South Eagle Road across from ACE Hardware.

"That will also be our last big push before election day to help educate the public on why we need this referendum approved so much," said Resnikoff.