WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The body that oversees the town’s fire district pledged Tuesday to support a study looking at the viability of Village Ambulance Service.

 

But first, the Prudential Committee questioned the scope of the study and refuted the idea that the district has “loads of money.”

 

Village Ambulance, a private non-profit agency, went to town officials earlier this year to explain its financial crisis and ask the town to consider some sort of financial support to help keep the service afloat.

 

From those conversations came a task force that included representatives from Village, town government, Williams College and the fire district.

 

Earlier this month, it was announced at a town hall meeting that the task force was going to bring in an industry consultant to study Village Ambulance’s operation, and that study was going to be paid for equally by the four bodies represented on the task force.

 

That announcement did not sit well with the Prudential Committee, which was upset about, among other things, not being asked to allocate up to $5,000 to support the study as part of a four-way split.

 

On Tuesday, Village Board Chairman Dr. Erwin Stuebner was at the firehouse to make his case to the three-member Prudential Committee.

 

He started out by apologizing for not presenting his request to the full body sooner. Although the fire chief and one member of the committee represent the district on the multilateral task force, Prudential Committee member Ed McGowan said he told the task force he could not make a financial commitment on the part of the full committee.

 

“The proposal we’ve put forth is for consultants who would study our EMS system, study what the town needs with respect to EMS, analyze our operation and come up with recommendations about how to make that operation sustainable in the long term,” Stuebner said. “We don’t know where that’s going at this point. There are many different ways people have pointed us.”

 

Given the dire situation at Village, the task force wants to get the study going as quickly as possible.

 

“The working group is part of a community effort to find a solution and make ambulance service available - whether from Village or someone else,” said Selectman Andrew Hogeland, who serves on the task force. “We’d invite you guys to be part of this community effort. There’s no pre-determined goal of what we’re going to discover. We want an outside look from someone who does this for a living.”

 

Hogeland and Stuebner said they want to get a request for proposals on the street in the next couple of days, and the task force already has identified two potential consultants who might be qualified to undertake the study.

 

They also told the Prudential Committee that in addition to the college and municipal sources of funding, the task force received pledges of private donations that could cover a significant portion of the estimated $20,000 cost of the study.

 

“Those two gifts will cut down on the funding that Village will share with the town and the college, and we’d be pleased if the Prudential Committee would join us with that,” Stuebner said.

 

Prudential Committee chairman John Notsley praised the contribution of Williams College, which also makes an annual PILOT contribution to the Fire District in addition to being the town’s largest property tax payer.

 

“My thoughts have always been that Williams College has always come to the rescue,” Notsley said. “They’ve been very good to the district and to the town and should be applauded for that. My one grievance is we never hear from the Clark Art Institute, the second largest non-profit in town. I think they should be brought to bear on the town’s operations. But that’s just me. That’s not the Prudential Committee. That’s strictly me.

 

“Williams is always there at the forefront.”

 

Prudential Committee member Ed Briggs took the lead in questioning Stuebner. Briggs said that his committee wanted assurance that the study it was funding would be unbiased, and he complained about the ambulance's decision to not open its books to the entities it was asking to help fund the study.

 

Stuebner said the decision not to give more financial details about the non-profit was on the recommendation of its attorney. Village has given broad outlines of its budget crunch in presentations to the town’s Finance Committee and Board of Selectmen.

 

As for potential conflicts of interest, Stuebner said that while one of the potential consultants is known to Village's Executive Director Mike Witkowski, Witkowski has not worked with or for the consultant.

 

Briggs said that he consulted with the Fire District’s attorney to see whether a financial grant to a private non-profit even was legal for the Prudential Committee to make. He reported that the only reason it might be legal is that the ambulance provides an “essential service to the town.”

 

“That’s a very narrow window that saves you,” Briggs said.

 

Briggs spent much of his time emphasizing that $5,000 was a big “ask” from a taxing authority, the Prudential Committee, that prides itself on fiscal responsibility.

 

“We’re elected by the taxpayers to perform a fiduciary function as basically trustees of taxpayers’ money and have to spend it according to what our warrant says at every annual meeting,” Briggs said. “We don’t put in an extra $4,000 or $5,000.

 

“I’ve had firefighters come to me and say, ‘You’re going to give them $5,000, and we can’t get a washer for our turnout gear?’ Every year, we get a wishlist from our firefighters, and we have to peel off what we can afford.

 

“To have someone at town hall say, ‘The Fire Department has loads of money, go to them.’ - that’s [expletive].”

 

Briggs ultimately made the motion that the district contribute an amount not to exceed $5,000 to support the study, and the motion carried by a 3-0 vote.

 

“Now we need to figure out an account to take it out of, and we only have one [possibility],” Briggs said. “When we run $20,000 short on buying a new truck, we’ll come back to you.”