Sylvie Rainaldi, unsuccessful in her bid for a seat on the Montgomery Town Board, appeared at town hall just 48 hours later in her capacity as a trustee of the Town of Montgomery Volunteer Ambulance Corps.
Rainaldi, accompanied by TOMVAC Captain Eric Shorette, spoke at the town’s budget hearing to request additional funding for the corps’ operation.
She noted the town had budgeted $150,000 for TOMVAC operations in the previous budget.
“We had a meeting with Brian (Supervisor Maher) and Sherry (Councilwoman Voss) about this year’s budget. It was communicated to us that amount would remain.
That figure does not include the cost of a stretcher system ($60,000 to be paid over three years) which the town has also agreed to fund.
Shorette said the corps typically staffs only one rig at a time.
“This causes us to drop calls because there’s not enough staffing,” he said, explaining that additional funding would enable them to have a second crew on duty at any given time. He notes there has been an increase in the number of calls throughout the year, an increase of “30-60 calls per month” since January.
Rainaldi said she was told that if they ran out of money, they could come back to the town board to ask for more. She would rather no wait until the money runs out.
“Asking us to run out of money before allocating more is not something that’s the right thing to do,” Rainaldi said. “We treat our other First Responders better than this.”
Rainaldi is hoping for at least an additional $50,000, noting that part of this year’s $150,000 allocation went into paying prior years’ debts.
Rainaldi raised other concerns at the budget hearing. She requested an updated version of the budget be uploaded to the town’s website, one that was a searchable PDF.
“If you can’t search through that, you’re scrolling through 100 pages,” Rainaldi said. “A searchable budget would give more accessibility to the public.”
She requested that the budget hearing be kept open for at least a week to enable the public to submit additional comments on the proposed 2022 budget. The town board closed the hearing, but agreed to accept written comments through Wednesday, Nov. 10. It must be adopted by Nov. 20.