Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

The current town board passed a resolution saying that If the referendum vote goes in favor of the
tax district that REMS would remain the provider.   If the referendum vote goes against the tax
district it would put the contract for ambulance service provider out to bid.   That is clearer than the
previous arrangement.

The resolution passed is no different than illegally designating REMS as the ems provider in the language of the referendum
itself...and the service was supposed to go to bid if the tax ever PASSED, not the other way around...as it is now...and if it didn't pass
there would be no need for bids...Mohawk would cost us nothing.

This "arrangement" is anything but clear...the guidelines have changed every time there is a threat to a guarantee that REMS
will continue to be publicly funded...whether it is suspiciously scheduled votes...resolutions that guarantee approved tax funds
exclusively to REMS...or reversing the circumstances that would generate the bidding alternative because REMS could not possibly
compete in the bidding process.

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

The signs SAID --- Save our EMS ---  what the Tomassone, Parisi, Buchanan TROIKA meant by the
signs is anyone's guess .....  if they are in front of people who love REMS -- they will say they are
pro REMS ...   if they are in front of people who want Mohawk or some other private provider -- they
will coyly explain that the signs mean they support Mohawk or some other provider   .... and if they
were campaigning for votes along the Arctic Ocean  --- they would tell the natives that they believe in
letting the sick and elderly float away on an ice sheet,     They will say anything for a vote and power.

If you were there you would know that it was in response to proposed cuts to the paramedics...as stated by the candidates who
were putting them up in their literature at the time.

I was there in 2005 and in 2009 when the signs were put up.

I didn't fall off the turnip truck last week.    When I decided to run for the town board in 2005, I was fully
briefed by persons in elective town offices on a many issues - including the ambulance and paramedic issue.

Bottomline --- the issue will be settled on December 14, 2010 -- then the town can move on to other issues.

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

I was there in 2005 and in 2009 when the signs were put up.

I didn't fall off the turnip truck last week.    When I decided to run for the town board in 2005, I was fully
briefed by persons in elective town offices on a many issues - including the ambulance and paramedic issue.

Bottomline --- the issue will be settled on December 14, 2010 -- then the town can move on to other issues.

The signs addressed an entirely different issue in 2009 than in 2005...2005 was a campaign to save the paramedic squad...2009 was
about saving taxpayers from an unnecessary tax for a different service provider altogether....and you were not there...that's why you
had to get the information from others by your own admission...and whoever "briefed" you was about as accurate and as thorough as
some currrent administration members have been with the public at large. No wonder you are so clueless about this topic...you were
given the same convenient version of events that the taxeaters have been trying to sell to the public for years.

This issue would be blisteringly clear if a certain deputy supervisor wasn't involved. If that were the case, Mohawk Ambulance wouldn't even be part of the equation as it is today. One year ago, there was a quite simple resolution: For or against an ambulance tax district. There was NO talk about 'bidding out' the town's ambulance contract, and rightfully so. It confuses the hell out of the issue. Here's a simple equation on how it should have gone.

1. Decide whether to support an ambulance service through tax district through referendum.
2. Then IF the vote fails, decide whether to contract with REMS.
3. Then IF Town Board doesn't want to fund REMS through the gen fund, they must select Mohawk as their provider.

Simple as that. No confusion at all. That gives residents a chance to vote on the new tax, board members a chance to vote on the added general fund tax, and ultimately board members the decision to dismantle the town's ambulance company.

The problem came when BG came back to the town board(BTW...getting camp contributions FROM Mohawk). He's been hell-bent on getting Mohawk a contract, and will do just about anything possible to make it happen. He was behind the ridiculous concept of 'bidding out for ambulance service,' which is just about the most asinine thing I've ever heard. Then when that had the opposite effect of throwing a wrench in things(people shrieking about a tax district for a for-profit company), he back-peddled until cooking up this latest incarnation of Operation Get Mohawk. Namely, he's pitting the two companies against each other. One has tons of capital they'll be able to spill into rhetoric, and the other will pretty much have to wage a campaign via word of mouth.

The thing I find most peculiar is that this issue is creating some mighty strange bedfellows...some who don't even realize who they're in bed with or that they're on the same end of the field fighting for the same thing. Put that in the pipe and smoke it.

what prevents rems from being a ALS provider?

Quoted from Hack

This issue would be blisteringly clear if a certain deputy supervisor wasn't involved. If that were the case, Mohawk Ambulance wouldn't even be part of the equation as it is today.

This issue has been an ISSUE l-o-n-g before 'no change'!

Quoted from Hack

This issue would be blisteringly clear if a certain deputy supervisor wasn't involved. If that were the case, Mohawk Ambulance wouldn't even be part of the equation as it is today. One year ago, there was a quite simple resolution: For or against an ambulance tax district. There was NO talk about 'bidding out' the town's ambulance contract, and rightfully so. It confuses the hell out of the issue. Here's a simple equation on how it should have gone.

1. Decide whether to support an ambulance service through tax district through referendum.
2. Then IF the vote fails, decide whether to contract with REMS.
3. Then IF Town Board doesn't want to fund REMS through the gen fund, they must select Mohawk as their provider.

Simple as that. No confusion at all. That gives residents a chance to vote on the new tax, board members a chance to vote on the added general fund tax, and ultimately board members the decision to dismantle the town's ambulance company.

The problem came when BG came back to the town board(BTW...getting camp contributions FROM Mohawk). He's been hell-bent on getting Mohawk a contract, and will do just about anything possible to make it happen. He was behind the ridiculous concept of 'bidding out for ambulance service,' which is just about the most asinine thing I've ever heard. Then when that had the opposite effect of throwing a wrench in things(people shrieking about a tax district for a for-profit company), he back-peddled until cooking up this latest incarnation of Operation Get Mohawk. Namely, he's pitting the two companies against each other. One has tons of capital they'll be able to spill into rhetoric, and the other will pretty much have to wage a campaign via word of mouth.

The thing I find most peculiar is that this issue is creating some mighty strange bedfellows...some who don't even realize who they're in bed with or that they're on the same end of the field fighting for the same thing. Put that in the pipe and smoke it.

No...this issue would only be "blisteringly clear" if elected officials and their legal cronies provided all of the information to the
public long ago, as the options have remained virtually unchanged...in which case REMS is the one that would not be part of this
scandalous equation today...the Mohawk option did not just surface last year...it is an offer that has been on the table since the
first discussions of special tax districts began.

If a vote fails, REMS is a non-decision...why on earth should we finance REMS out of a general fund with tax dollars if a special tax
for the same thing is rejected while the alternative is tax-free???? It's bad enough that we are holding an unnecessary vote...but
to turn around and publicly fund REMS against the will of the electorate should be grounds for a recall election! And IF it were to pass,
what is so "ridiculous" about bidding out the service to the most cost-efficient option, just as we do for other contracted services?
Oh yeah, that's right...REMS is a financial disaster and could never win in the bidding process.

The problem did not arrive with Deputy Supervisor Godlewski...it arrived the moment the interested parties decided years ago to
tax their way through eternal insolvency.

The anti-capitalism argument is irrelevant and always was....I can already hear the whining now...the tax defeated because those
evil for-profit capitalists had the money to provide the public with information the tax scammers unfairly refuse to divulge.

Quoted from Hack

1. Decide whether to support an ambulance service through tax district through referendum.
2. Then IF the vote fails, decide whether to contract with REMS.
3. Then IF Town Board doesn't want to fund REMS through the gen fund, they must select Mohawk as their provider.

I think #3 should be #1 in the decision making.

REMS should only be considered if they can guarantee they will be no cost to the taxpayer.  It would be irresponsible to burden the taxpayers to pay for a service that is covered by most all major private health insurance policies, and government health insurance, and especially in the current economic climate.  Charging even $1.00 extra in taxes a year, for a service that otherwise could be provided by a private company at no cost to the taxpayer is insane.

I would be willing to possibly take a compromising position of putting REMS on a 4 year plan that reduces funding by 25% of the current rate, making them self sufficient at the end of the 4 years.  If they can't manage to become self sufficient, then Mohawk or another provider would be given the rights to be Rotterdam’s Ambulance provider.

In 2005 and 2009 -- the GOP put up campaign lawn signs  which said on top   "SAVE OUR EMS"  ---
now the leader of the Regressives would like us to think that the signs meant different things in
different years  ... the FACT is the signs said   "SAVE OUR EMS" and when some suggested privatizing
the ambulance service in 2005  the GOPers and their sycophant Regressive friends  -- went on the
war path against them.     How dare you privatize our ambulance -- and they put up the "SAVE OUR
EMS"signs.
THAT IS A FACT

Last year when the GOP majority on the town board raised the tax district issue at the August Town Board Meeting -- not ONE GOPer or sycophant Regressive got up to oppose  the GOP proposal to have a tax district.    (I don't count Mertz as a GOPer at that time because he had already taken a drink from the "tea cup" and was way off the reservation)   Frank Salamone was pretty quiet on the subject  -- soI assume that because it was a GOP idea in August 2009 -- then he was all in favor of the tax district.

fastforward to Spring 2010 -- a new Democratic-Conservative controlled town board resurrects the
SAME  proposal made by the GOPers about 7 months earlier  -- and   the GOPers led by Frank
Salamone and the Regressives led by "the one we shall not talk about"  -- were orgasmically falling
all over themselves to criticize the proposal.   They were up one side of the administration and down
the other.

The GOPers and the Regressives do NOT have the best interests of the town at heart -- they are
looking out only for their political future and their best interests.

It's about no new taxes because taxes are too high already. The taxpayer already got bent over a barrel with the reval and you Dems want to just keep abusing them.

DVOR,

I do not understand your point.  The Reps. bailed on the "SAVE THE EMS" before the 09 election because it was politically unpopular, and by your own analysis was a "led balloon" and "had no traction".  Now those same Reps are recalculating their positions, because come to find out, Mertz was correct, Rotterdam residents don't want a taxing district. And as was mentioned earlier in the thread, the deal that was struck between the GOP and Conservative Party to force this through by permissive referendum fell apart.

So now the Conservative/Democrat controlled board is picking up the same fabricated REMS issue and are repackaging it, in an attempt to yet again force a taxing district on the unsuspecting Town's people, all for political gain.  And they are limiting the information for the residents and holding the election at the most inconvenient time and disenfranchising many residents by not allowing absentee ballots.

Rotterdam is a banana republic.

Quoted from Shadow

It's about no new taxes because taxes are too high already. The taxpayer already got bent over a barrel with the reval and you Dems want to just keep abusing them.

Last year the GOP wanted the tax district and .. Frank Salamone and the "person whose name we shall not
speak" - who leads the Regressives" .. seemed pretty OK with the tax district then.

Quoted from CICERO

DVOR,

I do not understand your point.  The Reps. bailed on the "SAVE THE EMS" before the 09 election because it was politically unpopular, and by your own analysis was a "led balloon" and "had no traction".  Now those same Reps are recalculating their positions, because come to find out, Mertz was correct, Rotterdam residents don't want a taxing district. And as was mentioned earlier in the thread, the deal that was struck between the GOP and Conservative Party to force this through by permissive referendum fell apart.

So now the Conservative/Democrat controlled board is picking up the same fabricated REMS issue and are repackaging it, in an attempt to yet again force a taxing district on the unsuspecting Town's people, all for political gain.  And they are limiting the information for the residents and holding the election at the most inconvenient time and disenfranchising many residents by not allowing absentee ballots.

Rotterdam is a banana republic.

The GOP  Tomassone-Buchanan-Paris crew bailed on it .. because the Democratic-Conservative ticket was
not drawn into a "shooting war" over the issue.     Tomassone-Buchanan-Parisi also tried to lure the ticket
into some other controversies  -- all to no result.    The fact is that the GOP-Regressive Coalition throws
some "red meat" out trying to gain votes --- they don't lead by actually putting forward serious proposals
that they actually believe in.