Quoted from Shadow

If the taxpayer votes it will be defeated because at this time in history people will not stand for any more tax increases considering that there will be no SS cost of living raise and the cost of medicare will also be raised at the same time the seniors will kill the bill IMHO.

I absolutely agree. I wouldn't even waste a dime or time on putting this up for a referendum in Nov. This will surely not pass. Also, if this town board is anywhere near 'smart', they will cancel the $10K/month they give to REMS. ($120k/YEAR)  Give it to Mohawk, a private, responsible, viable, healthy business. It would not cost the taxpayers one red cent. AND Mohawk would 'give money' back to the town yearly.

Can I hear a.....DUH!!!!

I would like to see REMS stay right here in Rotterdam if they can operate in the black and become a profitable business without being subsidized by the town.

Why not abolish them if we pay them a 'fee' each month......they also answer to Princetown....has anyone said anything about that? is Princetown
where the Police are policing outside Rotterdam? or is it on the eastern end near the city????

Quoted from Shadow

I would like to see REMS stay right here in Rotterdam if they can operate in the black and become a profitable business without being subsidized by the town.

I'll second that.  One question I would have though is if the employees of REMS are unionized, or if they plan on becoming so.  This is bound to prove a cost against the organization, and in time, the taxpayers of Rotterdam.  I know that everybody knows that my position before was that the ambulance squad should have remained voluntary.  The fact that is no longer the case makes it mute.  Now, each and every person working on the squad is now pulling a paycheck and we need to figure out how that and other expenses are going to be kept in line.  

I agree kevin about the unionization of the rems employees. From what I understan that was one of the ultimate goals.

REMS needs to let go of the taxpayer's apron strings and step out in the business world and compete....privately. Our economic society has and is continually changing. We NEED more private businesses and less tax paid businesses and hand out programs. The days of 'tax paid government programs' will slowly but surely come to an end. It has to....since there aren't that many people working anymore, the taxing of the wealthy, the stimulus/bailouts and the ridiculous health care beast.

No where have I ever heard that they are planning to unionize. Never once. It may be true, but I have never heard that.

Quoted from GrahamBonnet

No where have I ever heard that they are planning to unionize. Never once. It may be true, but I have never heard that.

Well I have!!!

However, the obvious and sensible and conservative solution is that REMS privatizes. That is a no brainer!!

You won't hear about it until it's already done.

Quoted from GrahamBonnet

No where have I ever heard that they are planning to unionize. Never once. It may be true, but I have never heard that.

national healthcare and ambulance???----what do you think will happen??????????????????????????????


.....SHOW ME THE $$ TRAIL..........

Shouldn't emergency services be run by the municipality? I don't understand the love for having our ambulances run by a private corporation that cares more about the bottom line than helping people in need. What's next? Privatized Police? Privatized Fire? Is that REALLY what we want!? In my mind, there are few services the government really should be providing. I'm all for limited government. However, it seems emergency services (police, fire, ambulance) are some of those services that should be provided by the municipality. I'm not saying they should be running millions of dollars in the red. But if these services are operating marginally ok, I say that is good enough. We should not be trying to profit on responding to emergencies. Should we be losing money left and right? NO! But, should we be making money? NO!

Also, if we really care about services performing in the black, and not throwing money into a black hole, perhaps we should take another look at the police department before we complain about tax money going to support the ambulance. How much of the town's budget goes to the police department? Why is the Rotterdam Chief of Police paid more than the Chief of any neighboring municipality? This is a far greater issue than the tiny % of tax that will be going to provide efficient emergency medical services to the residents of our town.

Greeny ~ that's why you need to step aside and allow real conservatives to move the town in the "right" direction.

You can't support propositions that expand government and then say you're a fiscal conservative.

Also, don't bash the police department when you're saying that we need to provide public safety.  Yes ~ Rotterdam has a very highly paid PD ~ having little crime is result of having a great police force.  Do we have abuse and fat in the PD?  Sure we do ~ but after Hamilton and Dagostino create the county wide police force we won't have to worry about putting it in our town budget ~ we'll just leave it up to the county legislature ~~ oooops ~~ that could be a real problem.

As for the ambulance company ~ force REMS to work within their means.  Nobody is suggesting a private company ~ REMS needs to just get their act together.

Felipe, first of all what is the definition of a "real conservative?" These labels demonstrate nothing "real conservative" is no different than "real republican" or "real democrat." All these labels really translate to "I disagree with you." Fine, maybe you do disagree with me, that's your right. It is also your right to question my views. However, please don't put words in my mouth. I never claimed to be a "real conservative." I said I was in favor of limited government. I also said I believe that 1 of the limited functions the government should have is to respond to emergencies. Do you disagree with that? If so, what functions do you think the government should have?

I also never "bashed the police department." I said that the police chief is paid more than any other community and that more money in the budget goes to the police department than any other function. Is this untrue? I believe that we could get the same great police protection that we have by spending less money. Isn't that the definition of "real conservative?"

As to no one suggesting a private company, I think that must be a joke especially when the title of this thread is Rotterdam Ambulance vs Mohawk Ambulance. Last I checked, Mohawk was a private, for profit, company. Has this changed recently?

GL you have no idea what it costs to run an ambulance service, the expense do to the state mandates are outrageous and the cost of medical equipment goes up every year. Now that the paramedics are paid it adds another expense on top of everything else and it's a sizable amount of money that the town doesn't have. REMS has to operate in the black or go under like any other organization or business. They will have to charge a fair price for their services and then be able to collect those fees in order to stay profitable or at least break even. How many other small communities have a paid paramedic ambulance corp and if they don't why?

shadow I'm not sure I follow your argument with  GL. Are you saying we should turn over the emergency services to for-profit companies because it is too expensive to care for our citizens? Based on what GL said about  the police budget should we turnthose duties to a for-profit company  to alleviate those costs too? I think GL was on to something when he asked what servicesyou all believe the government should provide.

All I'm saying is that the expense for running the REMS will result in a big expense for the taxpayer if the town pays for it. Rotterdam is not a large town that will be able to pay the REMS expense with all the other expenses it has to pay without raising taxes every time the expenses go up for the REMS. The cost of the police, town employees, and other expenses the town has to pay increase every year and the result is higher taxes that the resident isn't going to pay for. REMS has got to be able to pay for itself without taxpayer funds.