The voters in Port Allegany have spoken, but is it enough to ensure the Port Area Ambulance service gets the help it needs?
In the general election, Port Allegany voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of allocating an extra half mill of tax revenue to the ambulance service.
On Thursday, The Era received a letter from Kate Kysor, treasurer of the service and member of Port Allegany Borough Council. She’s concerned that council may not follow through with the funding.
“Due to the working in the referendum, the Port Allegany Council is considering not allocating an additional 0.5 millage” to the ambulance service, she wrote.
She believes this was due to the wording of the referendum. “It might be worded in there it was ‘up to,’” she said, meaning up to .5 mills could mean the ambulance service would get less funds.
And when she saw the initial budget proposal for 2017 for the borough, that extra millage wasn’t included in there at all.
Yet there’s a good reason for that, said Borough Manager Robert Veilleux. “The draft budget which was reviewed at the Nov. 16th budget work session was distributed to borough council at the Nov. 7th council meeting, prior to the Nov. 8th vote on the ambulance referendum,’ he said.
“The amount in the draft budget was .5 mill, which is the maximum a borough can allocate for ambulance services without a referendum,” he explained. “The allocation was left at .5 mill in the draft budget because at the time the draft budget was prepared, it was unknown whether or not the referendum would pass.”
A budget work session was held Wednesday night, Veilleux said, but no action was taken because a quorum wasn’t present.
Kysor is urging members of the public to attend the next council meeting, at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 5, to support the ambulance service.
While she wasn’t at the work session Wednesday, Kysor said she believes council members felt they needed more information before approving an increase in millage to the ambulance service. “It looked like our finances with the ambulance were doing well with the .5 millage we had,” she explained.
Yet that isn’t the case.
“What they don’t realize is we took a line of credit out with the bank here in town,” she said of the ambulance service. “At one point we were in the hole $73,000. Now we’re $39,000 in the hole.”
While that’s a huge improvement, it was one-time donations and financial support that made the difference. That can’t be counted on to save the ambulance service in coming years.
“If we got that .5 mills, we could look at making sure the loan gets paid off and maybe get a new vehicle,” Kysor said. Currently the ambulance service has a 2006 ambulance with 156,000 miles and a 2009 with 122,000 miles.
“I’m grateful to Liberty Township and the churches and anybody who has supported us,” Kysor said. And she’s hoping that support will continue, with residents voicing their support for the ambulance service to borough council.
