Who will pay for the county’s new Rapid Medical Response program?

Municipal elected officials from across Tompkins County are urging county leaders to foot the bill on the countywide Rapid Medical Response program (RMR) adopted in this year’s budget. 

The program, which kicked off in the first week of April, is meant to cut down on the time it takes emergency medical technicians (EMTs) to respond to a critical health incident such as heart attacks and strokes. In the town of Lansing, that time could go down from 14 minutes and 30 seconds to about 7 minutes, town board members and county officials have said. 

RMR was originally set to stretch out over two years, dispatching trained emergency medical technicians all over the county, and will primarily consist of three units. One will mostly serve the Lansing area, another will serve the town of Caroline and a third will be stationed in either Enfield or Newfield. The county has paid for the startup costs for the program, and the plan was initially for municipalities to take on a cost-sharing program for every year going forward. A conservative estimate of that yearly cost would have been around $500,000. 

Now, municipal leaders are looking to the county to continue paying for the program going forward without entering the cost sharing agreement proposed by the Tompkins County Legislature. At their March 28 meeting, the Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCoG), a board of municipal leaders from across every locality in the county, unanimously adopted a resolution urging the county to assume responsibility for program costs going forward. 

Town of Lansing Supervisor Ruth Groff, a Democrat, voted “yes” on the resolution.

The Council of Governments meeting can be viewed in its entirety here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS1eim-VGq4&t=4572s. The discussion on the RMR program starts around the 1 hour and 30-minute mark. 

“We are reiterating the fact that this should be a county-funded program,” said village of Trumansburg Mayor Rordan Hart.

He equated the RMR program to the county sheriff’s office, given that the law enforcement office offers services countywide and bolsters other municipal police agencies.

“We appreciate the legislature wanting to be as judicious as possible with their dollars to spend, as every other municipal body tries to be,” Hart continued. “However, the notion of cost sharing is not something that has even been conceptually discussed when talking about the sheriff’s department, so we don’t think it should apply to something like this.”

The program’s first-year costs amount to about $700,000. County Legislature Republican Minority Leader Mike Sigler, who represents the town of Lansing, has said at Lansing town board meetings that the county received around $630,000 from the state to cover that cost.

At the March TCCoG meeting, County Legislature Chair Dan Klein, a Democrat representing the town of Danby, Caroline and Ithaca, said that the cost-sharing program would be an equitable way to distribute costs.

“Clearly this will pass, so I’m not going to try to change your mind,” Klein said. “The cost sharing was going to distribute the costs a little more equitably among the people who aren’t already paying as much for emergency medical services. This resolution will eliminate that equity issue.”

Under a no-cost sharing-agreement financing, the costs will fall on the county. The county will likely generate that revenue from taxes.

“Your budgets are going to look a little better, and the Tompkins County budget is going to look a little worse,” Klein said. “That’s what this does by eliminating cost sharing. Having said that, we’re going to have a good program. I can tell you that we got 34 applicants for EMT positions, so I’m all enthusiastic. This is going to be a success.”

Lansing at Large appears every week in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com. Contact Eddie Velazquez at edvel37@gmail.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @ezvelazquez.

In brief:

The Lansing Community Library will host the annual meeting of its board of trustees on April 22 at 7 p.m. at the library.

Attendees will have the chance to meet the candidates running for seats on the board of trustees this year, as well as a chance to learn about what the library has in store for the coming year.

The annual budget vote and the trustee elections are April 23 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the library. Absentee ballots are available for residents at the library. They can be returned via mail, dropped off in the locked book return slot or returned during open hours.

Below are the trustee candidate bios submitted to the library’s website:

Ann Axtell

I’m Annie Axtell and I’m asking to be considered for my first term as trustee for the Lansing Community Library. I am a strong believer in the transformational power of books and reading, and of the importance of libraries in building strong communities. 

When my husband Aaron and I bought our house in Lansing in 2008, one of the first places I visited was the Lansing Community Library, and I’ve been a regular patron ever since.

My husband Aaron and I are graduates of the ESF-NYS Ranger School, and together own Cascadilla Tree Care. Cascadilla Tree Care has sponsored the Summer Reading Program at the Lansing Town Library since 2016. We are also a sponsor of the Lansing Theater and Performing Arts Booster Club (LTAPA) and the Lighthouse 5K. 

Individually, I am on the book fair committee at R.C. Buckley Elementary, and have volunteered as a coach for my sons’ baseball and soccer teams.

I am excited to do what I can to help the Lansing Community Library as it continues to grow and find new ways to serve our community over the next few years. Thank you for your consideration.

David Dier 

In 2007, I became a homeowner in Lansing where I spent weekends and holidays and then moved permanently to that home in 2019.

Since 1985 I have served on nine volunteer boards. Those boards began with United Way and most recently with FoodNet Meals on Wheels where I was chair of the board for three years, navigating the pandemic and change in executive

director. 

For five of those boards, I served as treasurer. Professionally, I am a semi-retired accountant and worked in corporate accounting from 1980 through 2002 in the Ithaca and Boston areas. 

From 2002 through 2019 I was partner in the William Henry Miller Inn in downtown Ithaca

(doing everything from the books to baking all of our bread!) Since 2019 I have

worked part time as a bookkeeper for three local not for profit entities.

I have been a fan of the Lansing Library since at least 2007. The staff is always welcoming! I am an avid reader, so this library is my ‘go to’ place. I believe in the value of local libraries (growing up in a very small town in northern New York, the librarian was always looking for books that would interest me) and want to do my part to keep our library vibrant.

Margaret Shackell 

I am an associate professor of accounting at Ithaca College. In tenth grade, I knew that I wanted to be an accounting professor, so I am living my high school dream. I earned my Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1999. My husband, Glen, and I raised our three kids in Lansing, and we have been an active part of the community since we arrived over 16 years ago. I have previously been on the boards of the Hangar Theatre, LTAPA, PTSO, Sports Boosters, and the CDC.

I am currently on the session (i.e., governing body) of the First Presbyterian Church in Ithaca. I would like to be on the library board because I believe that literacy is vital to success and a gathering place is vital to the community.

Budget

The proposed library budget can be found here: 

https://lansinglibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2025-proposed-budget-1-1.pdf