Page 10 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • June 27, 2012 Mahwah Township, EMS volunteers reach agreement by Frank J. McMahon Mahwah Mayor William Laforet and his administration have reached a 16-point agreement with the township’s emergency medical services volunteers to ensure a timely EMS response on a consistent basis. Both sides said the agreement is the result of the efforts of a dedicated team of EMS members from Ambulance Companies #1 and #4 and the township, which formed a partnership that looked at ways to resolve the response issues while continuing to provide a high standard of patient care. One of the points of the agreement requires ambulance crews to continue to sign up on the IAM Responding software to ensure around the clock coverage seven days a week. Another point states that, instead of calling an inzone ambulance corps company for a rig two times and then going to a crossover rig, the township will call out an in-zone ambulance only once and then go to a crossover. After the cross-over tone is sent and a complete crew is not signed on the IAM Responding software within two minutes, which would total four minutes, the township will then call surrounding communities for mutual aid for the emergency call. If a second call within the township is received, the in-zone squad crew will be dispatched first for a “second rig” one time. If no in-zone members sign in, the out-of-zone squad will be dispatched for a second rig one time. If a complete crew does not sign-in after an additional two minutes, or a total of four minutes, the township will then go to the surrounding communities for mutual aid. Another point calls for in-zone coverage seven days a week for both squads. Both squads will review current LOSAP (Length of Service Award Program) standards to come up with a single formula for compensation agreeable to both squads. That formula will be implemented Jan. 1, 2013. Under the agreement, the township will purchase eight Minitor V pagers and the pagers will be assigned on an asneeded basis to assist the EMS when they are short. The agreement also eliminates the positions of chief and deputy chief as long as the EMS squads remain as two independent entities. These positions will not be recognized by the township, and both squads will continue to report to the director of emergency services. There will be dual membership in both squads, and the agreement calls for open and honest lines of communications between squads. There will be monthly meetings of EMS members; Mayor William Laforet; Raymond Roe, the director of the department of emergency services; Chris Howard, the deputy director of the department of emergency services; and police Lieutenant Stuart Blank. The discussion of EMS response time began last year when Laforet and his administration began looking at options to improve the response time for the township’s EMS volunteers by using a paid emergency medical service if the EMS volunteers could not respond to the first two calls made in an emergency. The ambulance corps vol- unteers were opposed to using a paid emergency medical service. The issue surfaced at the March 29 council meeting, when more than 35 EMS volunteers, plus many of their supporters, voiced their objection to using a paid emergency medical service. EMS volunteer Cord Meyer provided the council with a slide presentation to support their contention that the two ambulance corps companies in the township have been, and can continue, handling the volume of emergency calls made by the 25,000 township residents and the 10,000 additional people who enter the township on a regular basis for the businesses, schools, libraries, churches, restaurants, and hotels in the 27 square mile township. Meyer told the council at that time that only 16 calls the two ambulance corps companies handled out of the 1,735 emergency calls in 2011 for motor vehicle crashes, cardiac and respiratory emergencies, women in labor, pediatric and geriatric emergencies, slips and falls, fires and rescues, and other catastrophes, went out to mutual aid emergency services groups in other communities and not one patient was charged for the service, which a private ambulance company must do by law. While Laforet voiced his respect and admiration for the volunteers and the service they provide, he claimed at that public meeting that the abilities of the volunteer ambulance corps structure had been outpaced by the growing daytime demands of the community and that there had been 600 missed calls over the past five years.