LINCOLNVILLE — Lincolnville, Camden and Rockport have all agreed to work regionally and craft a request for proposals for emergency care service, as part of accomplishing due diligence for their respective taxpayers, and to better understand what communities might want and need from ambulance services.

All three towns, along with Hope, currently contract ambulance service with Camden First Aid Association (CFAA). On the heels of a Feb. 27 meeting, when leaders of all four towns met with the CFAA Board of Directors and their director about the organization's fiscal situation, the town managers and administrators have swung into high gear to resolve the issue. Hope selectmen meet tonight, March 12, to discuss whether to join the three other towns. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Hope Town Office.

Camden First Aid seeking $407,000 in funding from four-town taxpayers

The nonprofit Camden First Aid serves the four towns year-round and around the clock. The organization told the towns last year that it must raise its rates this year in order to remain solvent, meeting first with town managers to lay out the details of the dire fiscal situation.

On Feb. 27, selectmen officially learned that Camden First Aid needed $407,000 this coming year to meet budget, up from the $56,000 requested collectively from the four towns last year.

The Camden-based nonprofit laid out its requests for this budget season, which would affect the four towns over fiscal year 2013-1014:

Camden, $174,000

Rockport, $129,000

Lincolnville, $77,000

Hope, $27,000

Camden First Aid's 2013-2014 budget includes a payroll expense of $477,500, with an additional $86,000 in payroll taxes and benefits. For years, Camden First Aid received annual allocations from each of the four towns it serves, but those donations, funneled through the service provider lines in each of the towns' budgets, have only supplemented a small portion of the Camden First Aid budget.

While the selectmen have all been clear in their appreciation of Camden First Aid personnel, legacy and emergency medical service, they have been equally firm in their commitment to taxpayers. They want to provide a comprehensive financial explanation by the June town meeting of available ambulance options, and let voters decide how to spend their tax dollars.

But they do not want to see Camden First Aid collapse as a organization and have made comments about restructuring the business and operational models. Ideas have begun to be tossed around; yet, the immediacy of the Camden First Aid budget shortfall is glaring in the community's face.

On Monday evening, March 11, four of Lincolnville's selectmen voted unanimously that: “the Town Administrator be given the latitude to work with the managers and administrators in the region in preparing a regional request for proposals concerning emergency medical services (EMS) and that he also work with others preparing recommendations to provide efficient and effective EMS over the long term.”

Rockport, likewise, agreed the same night to do the same.

“A RFP invites proposers to describe their own options, and encourage a range of options from those who want to respond,” said Rockport's Interim Town Manager Roger Moody on March 12.

And, one week prior, on March 5, Camden's Select Board directed its town manager Patricia Finnigan to circulate a request for proposals from ambulance services in the region, giving a May 15 deadline for a report.

The board asked her to work with regional town managers, including Hope, Lincolnville and Rockport to provide “a range of options and recommendations to ensure Midcoast residents continue to have reliable, high-quality emergency medical services available to them.”

A few days later, and after hearing more from Camden First Aid about its financial situation, the Camden Budget Committee recommended that the town budget $174,000 for Camden First Aid, with the understanding that the number could change if a viable alternative surfaced. The March 7 meeting of the budget committee was the first in a line of municipal budget discussions, and because that meeting had already been scheduled to discuss public safety, the topic of Camden First Aid arose.

In Lincolnville, the selectmen discussed for approximately 30 minutes the Camden First Aid state of affairs and agreed that the town needed to gather facts and figures, and understand options.

Last week, Lincolnville selectmen directed Town Administrator David Kinney to circulate a request for proposals to EMS services in the area to compare costs. But Kinney told selectmen that after that decision, Finnegan had contacted him to ask Lincolnville to take a more regional approach to the RFPs, with the option to break out towns with the RPFs.

“I said that seemed like a logical approach to me,” said Kinney, to the selectmen, March 11.

“A regional RFP is a benefit to the towns,” said Lincolnville Selectman Jason Trundy. “It will provide us with information. It would be silly of us not to go with that approach. There are so many pros and cons to every option that you have.... At the very least ,we have to gather enough info before town meeting.”

Trundy and others stressed the amount of work needed in short order to help strategize for short-term and long-term solutions.

Lincolnville resident Tracy Colby suggested that Kinney and others widen the field and include Searsmont and other small towns in their RFPs.

“We are all small towns,” she said.

“I think that's what the motion was for, to work with managers and administrators in the region,” said Kinney.

Colby expressed disappointment that the fiscal strain of Camden First Aid had surfaced only recently. Trundy concurred, saying “I wish we had heard of it a lot sooner. There should be a year or more given to this.”

Kinney said: “We just got caught.”

He said Camden First Aid is willing to explore other organizational structures, and the municipal requests the organization has submitted could reflect a worst-case number. He said the towns will allow for changes in circumstances as 2014 budgets are put together this spring.

Kinney indicated that the town managers and administrators will also be meeting to prepare recommendations for Camden First Aid, including the possibility of recommendations about what needs to be done immediately, such as connecting the organization with people/resources for fundraising, ensuring that they are capturing all the revenue they can, and creating viable plans for organizational structure and asset ownership.

Finnegan is drafting the RFP, and the area selectmen and administrators may meet prior to its circulation.

The goal, said Kinney, will be to determine "the expectation of the community and the community's willingness to pay for that expectation."

Editorial Director Lynda Clancy can be reached at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 706-6657.