ORANGE COUNTY, N.Y.–The Town Board of Mount Hope passed a resolution to have a public hearing on June 2 regarding the creation of a new ambulance district.
It will be held at the town hall at 1706 Route 211 West. Anyone from the public may come and voice an opinion about it, town officials said.
The effort to create an ambulance district was prompted by long response times for medical emergencies. Mount Hope Town Supervisor Paul Rickard told The Epoch Times that he has received complaints about the time it takes for medical help to arrive.
Rickard said the goal is to have a dedicated ambulance that will cover Mount Hope and the village of Otisville. The ambulance will be contracted from somewhere else, possibly the Greenville ambulance corps, and will be stationed at either the Mount Hope town hall or the police station.
“We are doing this because emergency response time needs to be better,” Otisville Mayor Brian Carey told The Epoch Times. “The key is to get you to the hospital as quickly as possible when needed.”
Currently, people might wait up to an hour for an ambulance to arrive. Rickard estimates that with a Mount Hope district ambulance, the wait would be only five to seven minutes.
According to Rickard, the estimated cost for the first year of running the ambulance district will be between $150,000 and $300,000. The owner of the average $137,429 property in Mount Hope can expect to pay $50.85 in the first year. The amount rises and falls with the price of the property, as the ad valorem tax requires a payment of $.37 for every $1,000 of property.
“If someone says, ‘It is going to cost you $100 or $50 a year for an ambulance,’ you are like, ‘What do I need that for?'” Rickard said. “But if your child is choking, your spouse is having a heart attack, or some other family member is having that kind of emergency, you will do anything to get an ambulance there quickly, right? You are willing to pay $5,000 for it, right?”
At the May 4 board meeting, the order for the public hearing got unanimous approval from Rickard, Deputy Supervisor Keri Lee Carey, and council members Christopher Furman, Amanda Davis, and James Jennings.
Mount Hope had 474 medical emergency calls in 2023. In 2022, it had 425, and in 2021, it had 373. Figures for 2024 are not yet available.
