Ambulance facility needs your votes

Thursday, November 24, 2011

As our readers well know, we believe the best course to follow to meet Milford’s emergency services needs is a combined Fire Department-Ambulance Service facility.

But town officials believe, and we can’t help but, unfortunately, agree, that voters aren’t going to go for it. History is on the side of that point of view.

So, they have proposed, for the March ballot, an ambulance-only facility near the town’s police station, a proposal backed 5-0 by the selectmen.

It would be a 7,800-square-foot facility at the corner of Cottage and Garden streets and would cost $1.9 million.

It’s a good plan, and a diverse group of citizens voted unanimously to recommend it to selectmen. It is the Ambulance Service that has the greater need because of the cramped space it currently inhabits under Town Hall. Voters have twice rejected a combined facility, so this does appear to be a sensible proposition.

How will it affect you? Well, in 2013, when the first payment on a bond would be made, the tax impact would be 10 cents, or $25 total for a house assessed at $250,000. We believe the ambulance building to be well worth that relatively tiny cost.

We know, of course, that in these economic times, any increase in taxes raises hackles. That’s understandable. But this is not the time to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Let us not forget that it took four years of trying, four years of voting, and four years of increasing construction costs to get the Milford Police Department the facility it needed.

We’re already behind on this ambulance facility, and we don’t think it would be a good idea to fall any further back.

This, officials believe, is the best plan they can get. We would prefer the combined fire-ambulance facility and believe it would have saved money in the long run.

But since the joint facility is no longer possible, we need to get behind plans for the new ambulance building. The current space is cramped, outdated and does not have room for the new ambulances that will soon have to replace the service’s two aging ones.