Council deadlock kills Lincoln ambulance proposal

LINCOLN – The town’s plan to start an ambulance service is dead.

The Town Council voted 3-3 on a proposal Monday to put as much as $180,000 into funding the service within the town’s proposed 2006-07 budget.

The deadlock effectively killed the idea unless it is resurrected at the council’s June 12 meeting. The new fiscal year begins July 1.

The vote left members of the Fire Department’s on-call company dismayed. They argued that the idea could generate revenue for the town while providing a needed service for residents.

But dissenting councilors felt that the uncertainty in the plan forced its demise.

“We’re not happy. A lot of people put a lot of time and effort into this,” Christopher Weed, a captain in the on-call company, said after the meeting Monday. “At no time was everybody on the same page.

“I am not sure it was mismanagement,” Weed added. “There was always some miscommunication. People always seemed to have different ideas as to what this was going to be.”

Town Manager Glenn Aho disagreed.

“It’s a good idea, but it should include the [Penobscot Valley] hospital and a full-time administrator,” Aho said after the meeting. “It’s too expensive at this point. We cannot run the operation as it was proposed.”

The proposal was for the fire chief to run a part-time ambulance service that would take patients to and from Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln, the PVH dialysis center or to other medical facilities.

A rebuilt 1999 Ford E-450 PL Custom ambulance was purchased for $48,680.

The service would have created about 20 part-time jobs for emergency medical technicians or paramedics.

It would not have replaced or supplemented the PVH ambulance service, which typically handles 911 calls, but it would cut into the non-911 transportation service offered by the East Millinocket Fire Department, which handles the Lincoln Lakes and Katahdin regions.

The fire chief who proposed the idea, William Lee, resigned Feb. 1, 2005, and his successor, Joshua Williams, quit a year later after five months on the job. That position remains unfilled.

Councilors John Weatherbee and Rod Carr questioned starting a service with its profitability and administration so uncertain.

“I believe this would be a good opportunity for us to lose money. It has nothing to do with the quality of the people involved,” Carr said. “We are here to spend the taxpayers’ money, and to do that as frugally as possible …

“We don’t have all the information on this,” he added. “We haven’t had it from the beginning.”

Councilor Linda Brown, who supported the idea, lamented its demise.

“When we started this a couple years ago, we did it because there was a good 45-minute to an hour wait for East Millinocket to get an ambulance here,” Brown said. “I think that just because we haven’t had a fire chief able to do this doesn’t mean we should give up on it. It’s a good idea.”

Weed said he thinks such a service would make the town money.

“You can bet that East Millinocket wouldn’t be operating their service if they weren’t making money,” he said.

Aho said he would try to lease the ambulance to PVH or other hospitals.