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Ambulance task force urges town to budget roughly $100,000 a year to sustain local EMS
Summary
After a 10‑month review, a council task force recommends East Hampton continue contracting with the East Hampton Ambulance Association and adopt a budget ramp that begins at about $100,000 annually to sustain service over the next 3–5 years.
The East Hampton Town Council received the final report of its Ambulance Task Force, which recommends the town continue to rely on the East Hampton Ambulance Association for roughly the next three to five years and adopt a stepped municipal funding plan to sustain operations.
The task force said it conducted 13 meetings and multiple interviews over about 10 months and used three evaluation criteria — service quality, cost and community satisfaction — to reach its conclusion. The report states that emergency medical services can no longer be provided for free and that municipalities must commit budget dollars to preserve local EMS capacity.
The task force outlined projections that showed a persistent shortfall in association revenues: as presented to the council, the ambulance association had been losing about $20,000 a month (about $250,000 a year) on current operations under recent fee collections. Based on the committee’s analysis and a parallel budget prepared by the association, the task force recommended the town budget roughly $100,000 annually in the near term to stabilize operations and asked the council to include that ramp in upcoming budgets through the fiscal year ending June 30, 2030.
The report also recommended operational and financial-management improvements from the association and said that, should the association become unable to continue providing service, the town should prefer establishing ambulance services within the municipal structure rather than contracting out to an outside provider. That recommendation was justified on grounds of preserving local control over cost and service.
Council members on the panel thanked volunteers and neighboring towns that shared information during the study. The council moved to accept the task force report and the motion was recorded in the meeting minutes; staff were asked to incorporate the recommendations into budget planning and to make the report publicly available for review.
Next steps: the council advised staff and finance officials to develop a budget plan to implement the recommended ramp and to return with budget language and cost detail during the budget cycle.
