Students may pay for ambulance use Orono forced to rethink its services for UM

ORONO – Residents on the University of Maine campus may end up paying to use the town of Orono’s ambulance services because the university is cutting its annual service payment to the town.

Last month, UMaine officials proposed reducing last year’s $659,436 payment in lieu of taxes by $90,000 for fiscal year 2002-03. The payment covers a number of services, including firefighting, code enforcement, dispatch and solid waste services, under the former service agreement.

In an e-mail Tuesday to Town Manager Gerry Kempen, the university’s interim chief financial officer, Mark Anderson, said that after further review, the agreement still “is not in the best interest of the University of Maine,” and so the $90,000 funding cut to Orono stands.

The cut is part of a universitywide proposal to trim $5 million from the school’s budget in light of rising employee compensation and benefits costs.

The decision to cut funding came after the university contracted with Capital Ambulance of Bangor last July as the backup emergency service to the University Volunteer Ambulance Corps. The move displaced Orono as the immediate backup emergency service.

Anderson also said in the e-mail that Orono has been recently confirmed as “the first call for ambulance service” this summer when UVAC isn’t in service. He added that the university is looking to enter a mutual aid agreement to put Orono second behind Capital when UVAC is in service.

Anderson suggested that billing individual students for each emergency call might help recoup some of the lost funding – an option the town has plans to employ.

“If the university isn’t going to support the service directly, then we will have to bill the students,” Kempen said.

A final decision will require some discussion with the council to determine if the arrangement is in the best interest of the students and the town, according to town council chairwoman Lianne Harris.

The position of the university on the local ambulance service has changed over time, Kempen said. When the town approached the university in 1998 about starting an ambulance service in Orono, officials at UMaine didn’t want students who utilized the service to pick up the tab.

“The response from administrators was that they saw the service as a valuable benefit and they didn’t want the students on campus to be charged for it,” Kempen said.

The relationship between the university and the town has changed as well, Kempen said. With the end of the service agreement on June 30 of this year, the university has eliminated the connection between its payment and the services rendered by the town, Kempen said.

“This truly is the end of a partnership,” Kempen said.

The university has not shown any sign of entering into a new service agreement with the town, which could prove problematic later on, Kempen said.

“Every year, we’ll be at the mercy of what the university wants to pay us,” Kempen said. “To plan a budget with that kind of uncertainty is extremely difficult.”

Anderson could not be reached for comment Thursday.