I am writing this to help the paper understand a growing concern/controversy that is coming up between emergency services in these towns.
Recently Plainsboro Rescue Squad, when sending out its annual fund drive, included addresses in West Windsor and Princeton. In retrospect it was a bad idea and we regret the problems that may be experienced by our neighbors. We have received a number of calls from our neighboring organizations and are seeking some publicity about our admission and apology. We will take appropriate steps to assist our neighbors to make this right.
The bigger issue as we are learning is that Plainsboro isn’t the only place where the government doesn’t fund emergency medical services adequately or at all. Without aggressive fund raising and rare grants, it would be impossible to serve our town’s need for emergency medical transport.
For the past 10 years Plainsboro Township has donated exactly $60,000 annually to Plainsboro Rescue Squad as well as providing fuel for our ambulances. This accounts for about 25 percent of our financial needs, which include insurance, vehicle maintenance, equipment, supplies, and training.
The township has its own emergency medical service, which operates from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday when volunteers are often unavailable due to work and school. While the paid organization bills for service, they actually add to the financial strain of the volunteer Rescue Squad because we have to pay for the additional maintenance, equipment, insurance, and even insurance deductible when the paid organization has an incident.
Plainsboro has a Fire District that receives tax revenue for the complete operation of fire services. It is unfortunate that EMS has to spend a great deal of resources trying to obtain sufficient funding to maintain this critical function.
I also want to emphasize that a full-time paid organization is not sufficient for any of the towns in the Princeton/Plainsboro area. The only practical way to get out multiple ambulances when there are concurrent calls or larger incidents is to have volunteers who ride on different nights but become available for larger incidents.
We believe that maintaining emergency medical services is critical and that maintaining sufficient funding is becoming increasingly difficult. Our need to increase our funding has ultimately led to this aggressive and unfortunate incident.
Emily Wolf
President
Plainsboro Rescue Squad
