TENAFLY, N.J.—About 40 Tenafly Volunteer Ambulance Corps members—all volunteers with multiple years or decades of volunteer service—showed up in solidarity Aug. 19 to question two Borough Council members who raised questions at a prior meeting about emergency response times.
At the July 15 meeting, Councilwoman Lauren Dayton had said “more than one resident came to me” to say ambulance response “was untimely” and she felt she needed to raise the issue.
Mayor Peter Rustin said, over 16 years as mayor, he’d only heard one complaint about ambulance response time and it was not credible.
He said every ambulance call is recorded as is response time and both can be checked. He said calls and response times can be checked if they are provided with the date and time of the call.
At the Aug. 19 meeting, Dayton called for a “review” of response times but before the council took further action, Councilman Mark Zinna suggested they review the one ambulance call which Dayton said she was referring to before asking for further data on any other calls.
The topic led off a nearly three-hour meeting, during which Rustin moved up the issue on the agenda due to a large turnout of volunteer ambulance members.
Assist the local squad
Dayton told the volunteers that she raised the issue initially not as a criticism of the volunteer emergency service but to find out if there were other ways the council might assist the local squad with resources and to find out response times and to help improve response.
She said her public inquiry was responding to a resident’s complaint.
Rustin said he was “very disappointed” that the matter of ambulance corps response time was brought up at a public meeting based on one complaint.
Councilman Venugopal Menon said he agreed that having more data and reports on response times “gives us the ability to respond to the public” when they have questions.
Basch called for “a management system to tell us what is basically happening.”
‘Unwarranted accusations’
Bryan Lapidus, a lieutenant with Tenafly Volunteer Ambulance, told Dayton Aug. 19 that Dayton had made “unwarranted accusations” at the July 15 meeting but had not produced any information related to a delayed ambulance response.
He said the volunteer corps had not received one complaint in 30 years but “in fact received hundreds of ‘thank you’ letters from patients each year.”
He said the local ambulance corps is 100 percent volunteer and provides emergency response 24/7.
He said each member receives state-certified EMT training. He said other paid and costly options exist for Tenafly to acquire paid ambulance service but all these options would cost residents more in annual taxes.
He said he felt Dayton’s “accusations and complaints are purely politically driven” and wondered why these issues were raised when they never before had been discussed by the council.
Need for updated HQ
He said, rather than an apology, he hoped that Dayton would endorse the corps’ needs for a new updated headquarters, including sleeping and showering facilities.
Dayton said the issue being raised was not a political issue.
“At no time do I not respect everything that TVAC is doing,” said Dayton, referring to the volunteer ambulance corps. “I cannot thank you guys enough and let me be very clear, I appreciate these efforts.”
Dayton noted a resident raised the complaint to her, Zinna and Basch, which is why she raised it.
She said there was no political motivation for raising the issue, dismissing any connection to Councilman Dan Park, who serves as council liaison to the volunteer corps, which supported him in the June primary.
She said the purpose for this discussion “was to make the system better, not to criticize and not to put anyone’s lives in danger.”
She said she had the “utmost respect” for TVAC and no prior discussions on privatization of ambulance service had occurred.
‘Give you…more resources’
“I am not the only one who heard this complaint … we are having this discussion to give you guys more resources” to prevent any future resident complaints about response time, she said.
Dayton said they wanted to know what the volunteer corps needed and were hoping to help the service better serve residents.
Dayton told Lapidus that she did not know the date the alleged delayed response occurred.
Basch said he “could not be more disappointed” that TVAC made the council’s discussion of offering a response-time management tool into a political issue. He said council discussion of such a tool was to make (TVAC) more efficient and not a political matter. He said a data tool for a better management system to monitor response times was needed.
‘Do it better’
“The most critical response in town is taking people to the hospital when they [are] sick. Don’t come back please and say that this is a political ploy… Come back to us and say ‘this is how you can do it better,’” said Basch.
Lapidus said TVAC has monthly meetings and hopes any response-time concerns would be raised then and not at a public meeting with no TVAC members present.
Rustin said he was “not convinced” that another management tool was needed to capture response times but the council would likely discuss the issue again.
Zinna suggested Borough Administrator Lissette Aportela speak with TVAC members to find out whether such a data management tool is needed and report back to council.
Rustin said Aportela should get feedback from TVAC and let the volunteer corps know in advance when she will report back on the issue at a future council meeting so a TVAC member can attend.