Tonawanda, N.Y. (WBEN) - Back in early October, the Town of Tonawanda announced it will be launching its own municipal ambulatory service starting sometime in early 2025. However, the launch of those services has been pushed back.
Tonawanda Town Supervisor Joe Emminger admits the process to get the services going is taking longer than the town would have anticipated, as they work through civil service and state approvals to formally get going.
"We are, right now, waiting for the civil service list to be processed," said Emminger in an interview with WBEN. "Hopefully we'll have that in the very near future, then we'll look to do some background checks and interview for the positions. And then shortly after that, we'll be able to hopefully start our training, and within about a month or so after that, we'll get our people on the road."
Emminger says the town has more than 30 applicants who have applied for positions that were posted a while back, but they still need to be processed through civil service.
At this time, Emminger is hopeful the town's ambulatory service will be launched sometime in the middle of 2025.
"We've got to have the people, we've got to have the personnel to hire before we can bring them on board," Emminger said. "The good news is we have had good reply to our requests for what we posted, the position, but it's just taking longer to work its way through civil service, which is out of our control. And hopefully we'll hear back soon, and we can start."
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Emminger feels the need for a municipal ambulatory service is not just great in the Town of Tonawanda, but also across many communities in Western New York.
"If anybody Googles an ambulance corps, municipal ambulance corps, you'll see that more-and-more municipalities are looking to do it, not only in Western New York but throughout the country. It's just because the need from the private sector is being hard to be met by them," Emminger noted. "And it isn't their fault, I'm not blaming anybody, it's just that most of these private companies have a high turnover rate across the country, 20%-30% a year, I've been told. And because of that, we felt, from an emergency services standpoint, to serve the residents of the town best, we'd be better off kind of piggybacking on what we did with our paramedics 50 years ago, of bringing on an ambulance corps to service our residents and business owners."
Emminger anticipates that once Tonawanda gets its ambulatory service operational, other municipalities in Western New York and across the state will follow their lead over the next four or five years.
As the town waits to kick off its ambulatory service, a total of four ambulances are already available to begin answering service calls.
"We had one donated generously by New York State through Assemblyman [Bill] Conrad's efforts. So we had to acquire three ambulances, it costs us approximately $750,000 for those, and that money was bonded," Emminger said. "And then personnel, we're going to have about 20 EMTs we'll be bringing on board, along with some supervisors that will have to manage the staff. It's a major capital investment, obviously by the town, and we believe and know that due to the over 6,500 ambulance calls that are made here in the town a year, we believe the revenues will more than offset the expenses that are being projected."
At the end of the day, Emminger feels the town is doing things the right way in order to serve the residents better.