Troy Fire Chief Replies To Concerns Over Ambulances

By Charlie Feldman

cfeldman@timestribunnews.com

A post on a Troy Facebook group on Saturday raised concerns about recent actions by the Troy Fire Protection District and its board members. The post said that they cut staffing down to one ambulance and a chase vehicle and voted themselves 152 percent raises.

Some time ago the district went down from three ambulances to two with a fifth EMS member in order to save on overtime. Troy Fire Chief Ed Collins says the board doesn’t think that model is working, so they’re trying a different one to see if that works better.

He said that most of the personnel work full-time jobs someplace else so on rare occasions enough people call in sick or are unavailable that they can’t cover two ambulances. He stressed that this was a rare occasion. He said their goal was to keep two ambulances going all the time.

As far as the trustees’ salaries, he said they have been paid around $500 per year for the past 20 years and they put in a huge amount of time. They raised the salaries to $1500 a year – not per month, he said – to match what the rest of the fire protection districts have been getting.

Collins said the board discussed the salaries in closed session, which he did not get to attend.

That part of the meeting would not have been on Zoom and would not be in the official minutes  that will soon be made available to the public. Minutes from executive sessions and closed meetings are unavailable to the public until the board eventually votes to release them (sometimes there are ongoing legal issues that might prevent that for years).