Mullica to Sell Ambulances - Rescue Squad or no Squad
The Township Committee agreed in January to let the members of the squad make a public pitch for their volunteer services to be retained again. The squad disbanded in December after it could not convince the township to provide it with a new building......Continue Reading
The township has a contract for service with the Hammonton Rescue Squad that runs through the end of the year. But Mullica's squad wants to resume serving the township on a part-time basis, providing it gets the building it wants.
The committee never gave the squad a deadline to make its pitch, and Chief Gary Franklin was still in the process of scouting a property the squad could call home.
"If you can keep a medical entity in this township that is yours, then you're going to be ahead of the game," Franklin told the committee at a recent council meeting. "Once it's gone, you're never going to get it back."
But the committee still decided to sell the squad's two ambulances.
"There is no ambulance squad at this point. And we have two ambulances that we don't need, that eventually would have to be replaced even if there was an ambulance squad," Committeeman Bill Kennedy said.
Committeeman Michael St. Amour encouraged the squad to still make its pitch but said the age of the ambulances -they are 1988 and 1995 vehicles - was a big concern.
It would cost between $65,000 and $80,000 just to rehabilitate the 1995 vehicle, St. Amour said.
"Anyone else who makes a proposal to the municipality would be coming with equipment. And these will be sitting for another nine and a half months," he said. "I don't know if they'll even start at this point."
Franklin told The Press of Atlantic City last month that as long as the squad got a new building it would not ask for a new truck.
The 1995 truck is still a very good piece of equipment, he said, but the squad would eventually ask for the township to purchase a used truck.
Franklin said he was disappointed in the committee's decision to sell the trucks before giving the squad's members a chance to make their pitch.
"We've been moving forward in good faith," Franklin said. "But it looks like their minds are already made up."
Township Clerk Kimberly Johnson said the vehicles will likely be auctioned on www.govdeals.com within a month.
E-mail Robert Spahr: RSpahr@pressofac.com
This story was taken from the news source stated above. It is not the opinion of The Elwood Vol. Fire Company or it's members.
