WILLIAMSTOWN — The post-ambulance era is underway in Williamstown, where the select board agreed to sell the town’s ambulance to the highest bidder, trade its vital signs monitor for a couple of automated electronic defibrillators and get started on licensing a FAST squad.
Chair Larry Hebert was not in attendance. Hebert was recently hospitalized and is now home recovering from a medical procedure that prevented him from attending the meeting, and forced the board’s vice chair, Chris Wade, to pinch hit.
Wade got plenty of unsolicited advice from Selectman Christopher Peloquin during a session that featured some finger-pointing and — moments after it adjourned — an angry exchange between Wade and Rep. Rodney Graham, R-Williamstown.
The verbal altercation — one that saw Graham shouting at Wade — stemmed from a protracted discussion that ended roughly 90 minutes earlier with the board’s decision to reclassify a 100-foot section of Clark Road in order to create a safe turnaround for snow plows in the winter.
During that discussion Wade quizzed Peloquin on whether he was paid to plow a Class 4 section of Clark Road that is now slightly longer than it was when the meeting began.
Peloquin insisted he wasn’t, and noted Wade was a member of the town’s road crew — a fact that prompted Graham, a former board member and sometimes chair, to suggest Wade recuse himself.
“You work for the road department, you should abstain,” Graham said, prompting a rapid response from Wade.
“Did you abstain from everything in regards to the fire department when your son (William) was chief, and you were on the board?” Wade asked, even as Graham was interrupting him.
“I am not on the fire department. I have never been on the fire department,” Graham shot back.
Though the exchange set the stage for a heated post-meeting squabble between the two men, Wade dismissed it at the time and joined board members Clayton Woodworth and Scott McCarthy in voting to downgrade a short stretch of Clark Road from Class 3 to Class 4, while creating a designated turnaround for town trucks on property owned by Lucky Boardman.
Peloquin abstained from the vote, though he repeatedly questioned the proposal to shorten the section of Clark Road that the town is responsible for maintaining for the third time, while warning it could create a precedent that would undercut its recent decision to downgrade MacDonald Road.
Peloquin voted against forming a FAST squad, though he stressed it wasn’t because he didn’t support the concept in the wake of the town’s recent decision to contract with Barre Town Emergency Medical Services.
That contract started with the new year, and while the sample size is small, Peloquin noted the response times have been impressive and creating a FAST squad was “premature” given the fact it represented an expense that wasn’t reflected in a budget proposal that is almost ready for adoption.
Wade, Woodworth and McCarthy all saw it differently. They agreed there was no harm in licensing a FAST squad, and said they were comfortable with a proposal to use $12,000 in rent Barre Town EMS will pay the town for the space it is occupying in the public safety building to underwrite the cost of a supplemental service.
A motion to create a local FAST squad was approved, 3-1, and though Peloquin was initially reluctant to appoint a head of the service, the board unanimously tapped Marie Abare.
Abare, who was a member of the recently disbanded Williamstown Ambulance Service, was one of two applicants for the position, which receives a $1,000 stipend. Town Manager Jackie Higgins said the other was Tyler Mitchell, who also served on the local ambulance service. The board was told a third applicant withdrew.
Board members welcomed word there are two buyers interested in the ambulance the town no longer needs, and was recently valued at $35,000. East Montpelier is scheduled to inspect the ambulance with an eye toward acquiring it on Friday, and Higgins said the company that sold the ambulance to Williamstown has expressed interest in buying it back.
Board members authorized Higgins to accept the best offer.
The town no longer has a need for the monitor that was purchased for the ambulance and Higgins said is valued at $5,000. She said Barre Town EMS offered to pay that amount for the used equipment, or provide the town with two new defibrillators that are compatible with equipment it uses.
Abare said the FAST squad would need at least one defibrillator, and suggested the board agree to the proposed “swap.” Board members did, though they tabled action on a $1.6 million general fund budget so that Higgins could make some last-minute adjustments.
The board is expected to finalize the budget during a special meeting next Monday.
The budget will include funding for the FAST squad, and likely $116,000 in new revenue — most from the town tax stabilization fund and some from a soon-to-be audited fund balance — to reduce the tax impact of the budget. The board used nearly $143,000 from the tax stabilization fund as a source of revenue in this year’s budget.
Higgins said the budget won’t include money — $146,000 — the town will need to invest in engineering associated with renewing one state stormwater permit that recently expired, and another that will in August.
The engineering for sites on Business Center Road and Industry Street will each cost $73,000, though Higgins said the town will apply for, and should receive, separate $40,000 grants to help cover the cost.
In the meantime, board members agreed to use some of the pandemic-related federal funding it had set aside to upgrade the town garage to begin working on both stormwater permits.
david.delcore
@timesargus.com
