Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist during the Jan. 27, 2020 Jamestown City Council meeting.

JAMESTOWN – Mayor Eddie Sundquist says the city is doing what it can to address a pending crisis with ambulance service in the community after Alstar Ambulance Service and UPMC Chautauqua announced last week that it was terminating its mutual aid agreement with the city.

UPMC Chautauqua’s Alstar EMS division is the primary provider of EMS transport in the city. The Jamestown Fire Department isn’t the primary ambulance service provider for the city, but fills in when Alstar is out of service.

In recent years, the fire department has been fielding more and more EMS calls. That means UPMC Chautauqua has to give the city more in reimbursement payments under the mutual aid agreement.  The hospital has said it is now terminating that agreement because it is over 20 years old and UPMC now wants to see new reimbursement rates with the city.

According to Sundquist in his 2020 State of the City report, the city was handling 50 ambulance transports a week and contracted and contracted with Alstar to be the primary ambulance provider for the city to bring that number down. However, last year alone, the city fire department did over 1,000 ambulance transports while Alstar was offline, adding the number doesn’t account for countless calls for service that brought neighboring municipalities in to assist. “This is simply not sustainable for the city,” Sundquist said.

Following Monday Night’s Jamestown City Council meeting, Sundquist gave WRFA and other members of the media update on the ambulance service situation, saying that while the city plans to meet with UPMC officials to discuss an the termination of the agreement and possibly iron out terms for a new agreement, it has also put out a Request for Proposals (RFPs) to see if another privately operated service provider would be willing to come into the community.

“At this point we are going to be working be working with Alstar to see if there is anyway we can move that relationship forward. In the meantime, we are also going to be putting out a Request for Proposal to provide an exclusive ambulance franchise for another private ambulance to come in and service our residents,” Sundquist said.

As for Alstar, Sunduist said the mutual aid agreement with the city will be terminated by mid April unless the two sides can come to agreement on new terms.

“Alstar is not leaving the area. We’ve not been given that indication. They are terminating their agreement with the city in April. They’ve given us a 90-day notice,” Sundquist said.

Late last year former Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi – along with Deputy Fire Chief Sam Salemme and Public Safety Director Harry Snellings – had put forward various options to consider in order to address the growth of EMS calls being handled by the city as Alstar continues to roll back its service in the community. Among those suggestions was contracting with other private companies, which could have a projected net cost of $450,000 for the city. Another option would be for the city to provide its own in house ambulance service, which could cost as much as $1.5 million for the city – something both Teresi and Sundquist have stated is unlikely to occur.

In the meantime, the city Fire Department will still have to contend with increased EMS calls in the near future. That means it will likely need new ambulances to add to its fleet, something that was included in the $13.6 million 2019 Smart City Capital Investment Plan the city council approved last year and which included borrowing up to $12.6 million to help pay for it.

JAMESTOWN – Mayor Sam Teresi Monday night presented members of the Jamestown City Council with new information involving the possibility of the city expanding its public safety services to the community.

Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi during the city council’s Sept. 23, 2019 work session.

Teresi offered new details on his proposed Smart City Capital Investment Program he first brought forward two weeks ago that involves the city using some of the money from that $12.9 million capital investment proposal for the establishment of a city-operated Emergency Medical Services department.

• READ THE FULL CITY EMS PROPOSED OPTIONS REPORT

The mayor said he is bringing the proposal forward due to the current privately operated ambulance service – Alstar Ambulance Services – ratcheting down its services in the community in during the past several months. Teresi said the primary reason for the reduction in service by Alstar is attributed to an inability by the company to turn a strong profit because many of the calls they respond to are covered by Medicaid and Medicare, which provides a low reimbursement rate, especially in rural communities like Chautauqua County.

Teresi said that when the private sector is unable to meet the public safety needs of the community, it is time for the local government to step forward.

“This is an effort to acknowledge there is a challenge and a problem and to get prepared to deal with it if we ultimately have to. We hope that we don’t, but we can’t bury our heads in the sand and say that there’s not a challenge and an issue out there,” Teresi said. “This is something that is not an alternative for us. There’s no choice here. This is bare essential public safety and if the private sector is not going to respond and provide, the public sector that is charged and tasked with the public safety of the community must respond.”

Left to right: Jamestown Deputy Fire Chief Sam Selemme, Public Safety Director/Police Chief Harry Snellings, and City Comptroller Joe Bellitto.

As part of the presentation, both of Jamestown Public Safety director Harry Snellings and deputy fire chief Sam Salemme went over information regarding why more medical emergency calls are being dealt with currently by the Jamestown Fire Department, with the primary reason being that there’s been an increased trend of Alstar being “out of service” – which means it is unable to respond to emergency calls at any given point during the day. According to their report, the average number of times Alstar has reported being out of service has increased during the past few months and the length of time the out of service designation lasted ranged anywhere from four hours to 17 hours in August alone.

In addition to reviewing the number of increased calls the fire department has had to deal with the past several months, the report also broke down the cost associated with EMS calls.  Using that information, City Comptroller Joe Bellitto went over four options for the city to consider if there came a time that it had to offer a regular and permanent ambulance service to the community. The options ranged from having the city fire department take over services, to establishing a a local development corporation to operate the service.

Bellitto also explained that no matter what plan the city went with, there would likely be an additional net cost to taxpayers – ranging between $400,000 and $1.5 million – with utilizing the city fire department as the most expensive because of the labor contracts that are in place with its members.

Members of the Jamestown City Council during their Sept. 23, 2019 work session.

Following the presentation, city councilman Andy Liuzzo expressed his appreciation for the work that went into the report, but requested the council hold off on making any decisions on how to proceed until after the new year when a new mayor is in place and when there will also likely be new city council members. Liuzzo is one of three candidates running to fill the open seat left by Teresi, who announced in February he would not be seeking reelection.

Ranking councilman and finance committee chairman Tony Dolce also asked if it was possible for the city to first have a conversation with UPMC Chautauqua and Alstar to see if there was any other way to address the problem without rolling out a new EMS program from the city.

It was not determined if or when the council would act on borrowing the money needed to establish the ambulance service. The current council has four voting sessions remaining for this year, including this month’s voting session, scheduled for next Monday, sept. 30.

Sam Teresi presented his $12.9 million Smart City Capital Investment Program to members of the Jamestown City Council during the Sept. 9, 2019 work session at city hall.

JAMESTOWN – Mayor Sam Teresi has less than four months to go before he leaves office at the end of this year, but that’s not stopping him from rolling out an ambitious borrowing program that he says could result in the city saving half a million dollars on an annual basis.

On Monday night Teresi, city staff, and the Jamestown City Council spent over two hours reviewing the proposed 2019 Smart city Capital Investment Program, which involves the city borrowing $12.9 million in order to address capital and equipment challenges facing the city.  An additional $1 million would also come from the state Financial Restructuring Board (FRB).

The mayor said that unlike borrowing proposals of the past, this proposal is geared toward an effort to identify and go after large expense projects in an effort to create efficiency and save money.

• READ DETAILS OF THE PLAN

“This is our first major foray into a true, smart city initiative where everything that we’re investing in has an efficiency, a revenue-generating potential, and has a savings potential. A lot of our bonding initiatives, as you’ve seen in the past, have been reactive to things. And some of the things that we borrowed on didn’t meet the definition of smart city,” Teresi said.

The plan involves borrowing money for seven main categories – three of which would focus on needs at the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities and the other four would focus on city infrastructure, facility needs, and vehicle and equipment replacement and upgrades for both Public Works and Fire Departments.

For the BPU, an estimated $3.5 million could be borrowed to address sewer lines, water mains, and needs at the wastewater treatment plant – although the specific amount wont be known until after BPU officials finalize a detailed plan for the borrowing.  That final plan could come by the end of this month.

Meanwhile, the other $9.4 million would be borrowed to cover everything from possibly building a new DPW garage to replacing and upgrading vehicles in the city fire department. Deputy Fire Chief Sam Salemme said that right now, several vehicles in the fleet are in very poor condition and borrowing as much as $1.2 million would go a long way addressing the problem.

“In one of the trucks – something as simple as a braking system has become obsolete. We pay through the nose to get just a caliper and brake pads to repair one of the trucks,” Salemme said. “It’s just costing us a lot of money to repair these trucks.”

Jamestown City Councilman at large Andrew Liuzzo (center) discusses the smart city Capital Investment Program with Mayor Teresi and other council members during the Sept. 9, 2019 work session.

Another major component of the borrowing would go toward the DPW, with $1.9 million being used to help pay for equipment and vehicle needs. In addition, $1 million from the FRB, making the total investment $2.9 million.  Another $4 million would also be used to construct a new DPW garage on Crescent Street.

DPW fleet manager Patrick Monaghan said right now the garage on Steele Street isn’t adequate to meet the needs of the department.

“One of their strongest recommendations for us – in order to put in place what they believe would be an effect fleet management program going forward – is that we need a larger and more adequate facility. Not only for maintenance, but just for simply managing a vehicle from the moment we buy it to updating and serving the vehicle to the day that we dispose of it,” Monaghan said. “Now, are we getting the work done? Yes. But we can do it a lot more efficiently, a lot quicker and a lot easier if we had the facility to do that.”

The total borrowing could be as high as $12.9 million and not all the projects would come on line at once if the borrowing did take place. However, Mayor Teresi said that by packaging all the items together under one borrowing program, it could help save the city nearly $150,000 in administrative costs and other fees that are typically associated with the bonding process.

“As we’ve done in the past with the BPU, when we package bonding initiatives together we are able to piggy back on top of each others efforts and basically share those costs so that we’re not going out in 2019 and doing $150,000 in costs and then the BPU is going out in 2020 or 2021. We’ll take them under one initiative and we’ll share the proportionate costs.”

If all projections were met, the mayor said the city would realize a projected annual savings of $599,500 through the program.

While the project was only publicly revealed on Monday night, the program is on an aggressive timeline to be reviewed and then acted on by the city council. According to the mayor, the council may give its authorization to proceed with the bonding process in a resolution that could be voted on as soon as this month’s Sept. 30 voting session.