MONTICELLO, NY — Emergency medical services throughout the country are facing a shortage of volunteers.

A 2019 survey from the New York State Emergency Medical Services Council (NYSEMSC) indicated that 59 percent of rural volunteer responders had moderate to severe impacts to their response time due to volunteer shortages. Two-thirds of agencies statewide saw decreases in their certified volunteers in the three years preceding the survey; 16 percent saw a drop of more than 25 percent.

The problem affects emergency medical services (EMS) in Sullivan County as well. A 2020 study from the Benjamin Center at SUNY New Paltz, saw the findings of the NYSEMSC study “echoed by leaders of every ambulance corps interviewed for this study.”

The Benjamin study provided a foundation for discussion at the October 20 meeting of the Sullivan County Legislature about ways to support the county’s EMS. Legislators discussed the issue of county EMS with Tom Farney, commissioner of the division of public safety.

Alex Rau currently serves as a coordinator for Sullivan County’s 911 center and for the EMS. Legislative chairman Rob Doherty asked if those should be different positions.

Rau currently donates a lot of his own time to the task of managing both positions, said Farney.

Legislators also asked about the response times for county EMS. The most recent data showed a response time of around 12 minutes, slightly better than the national average of 14 minutes, said Farney.

That data, as described in the Benjamin study, comes from 2017 and 2018. A number of factors could have worsened response times since then, noted legislators. That Garnet Health moved services out of Sullivan County meant EMS had to spend time transporting patients to out-of-county hospitals. COVID-19 left a number of impacts on the county, including a swelling population.

The Benjamin study recommends one of two paths to deliver assistance, said county manager Josh Potosek. The county could either provide an ambulance service staffed with county employees, or it could contract to a private company to provide that service. Whichever way the service came about, it would cover times of day (specifically working hours) and areas of the county (specifically Bethel and Neversink) that volunteer ambulance corps might struggle to cover.

Potosek estimated that having one EMS rig in place 365 days a year would cost the county around $1 million.

The Benjamin study called some shift to a county-run EMS system “inevitable,” with many services—including dispatch—already centered at the county level. “Both local leaders and officials with a statewide or regional perspective agreed that a town-based EMS system, as reliant on Sullivan County’s currently is on volunteers, cannot survive in the middle and long term.”

Potosek said that a double-digit number of counties in New York had started shifting to a system where the county held a certificate of need and funded an ambulance service.

Legislators asked Farney to report on the establishment of a separate EMS coordinator position, on the state of the county’s EMS, and on the possibility of the county funding its own ambulance service. That report is tentatively on the calendar for a December meeting of the county’s executive committee, at 9 a.m. on Thursday, December 15.

Click here for a copy of the Benjamin Center study on Sullivan County's EMS.

Recycled content

The legislature also discussed a proposal from Hughes Energy for a recycling project at the county’s landfill. According to the resolution, the landfill is capped and no longer in use, but the alternate landfill the county has been using is anticipated to be capped within the next five years, and the county wants to explore various alternate solutions.

Commissioner of the division of public works Edward McAndrew explained that Hughes Energy wanted to station a research and development plant at the Sullivan County landfill. The plant would use a steam autoclave to accelerate months of composting into a one-hour process, turning compostable material into a fibrous product that could be sold.

The process would reduce the amount of material Sullivan County needs to deal with by 30 to 50 percent, said McAndrews. That would allow the county to partner with smaller landfills to handle the remainder.

Hughes Energy wants to start with a small R&D plant that could handle 20 tons of garbage a day, he added. That plant would be powered by the electric grid. If successful, Hughes Energy would build two plants with a combined capacity of 40 tons an hour, probably powered by propane.

Legislators held no vote on the proposal, saying they wanted a presentation so they could better understand the project.

Housing in Rock Hill

Legislators voted in favor of a different resolution, authorizing the sale of land from the Emerald Corporate Park in Rock Hill.

Developer Robert Berman, former CEO of Empire Resorts, plans to use the property as a location for a housing complex. According to Steve Vegliante, who attended the meeting as Berman’s attorney, Berman plans to put up to 100 market-rate apartments in that location.

Correction: an earlier version of this article characterzed the housing development in Rock Hill as affordable housing. This characterization was incorrect; the appartments will be market-rate, private apartments. This has been corrected as of 6 pm, November 1.