By Thomas J. Prohaska
Buffalo News
LOCKPORT, N.Y. —Niagara County’s proposed budget for next year halves its Mercy Flight contribution, which drew criticism at Monday’s County Legislature work session.
Legislator David E. Godfrey, R-Wilson, said the reduction from $56,650 to $28,325 was unwise, calling the helicopter ambulance service “vitally critical to the well-being of our citizens.”
“In the northern part of Niagara County, Mercy Flight is life and death,” Sheriff James R. Voutour said, noting that Erie County Medical Center is 45 minutes away by road and 13 minutes by air.
Voutour requested full funding for Mercy Flight, but County Manager Gregory D. Lewis said he and Budget Director Daniel J. Huntington made the reduction as part of an effort to minimize a tax increase.
The tentative budget raises the amount to be collected in taxes by 5.4 percent.
“The amount Niagara County contributes to Mercy Flight is higher than Erie County or any other county,” Huntington said.
“There’s hospitals all over Erie County,” Voutour told reporters. “It’s easy to send someone in an ambulance.”
Erie County cut Mercy Flight out of its budget altogether a couple of years ago, Lewis said. After Niagara, the next highest county contribution is $15,000 from Genesee County.
Mercy Flight’s overall budget last year was $6 million, according to its funding request.
“Mercy Flight’s not going to stop flying,” Lewis said. “There’s quite a bit of money to be made from private pay [patients].”
The Mercy Flight move was one of several items that sparked discussion Monday.
Voutour said he is requesting $65,000 to replace half the computers at the 911 answering stations in the dispatching center, but he warned legislators that he may request an estimated $1.5 million for a whole new 911 phone system next year.
Voutour said the popularity of text messaging has changed the communications scene. He said he may ask for a new system that can accept texts to 911, a capability he said no one in the nation has now.
“In the Virginia Tech shooting, there were people under desks who were trying to text 911 so the shooter couldn’t hear them,” he said of the 2007 massacre. Those texts never were received.
Voutour said his department is now saddled with a $139,000 expense for mental health services for jail inmates. The county’s own Mental Health Department used to provide those services, but it dropped them because the state ended reimbursements for the cost. The Sheriff’s Office had to contract with an outside agency.
The jail also lost funding for holding inmates sentenced to state prison until the state finds a cell for them and for housing parole violators.
Despite those losses, Voutour said the net county cost for his overall operation is budgeted to rise only 1.8 percent next year, even though every employee but one is receiving a 3 percent pay raise under terms of previously approved union contracts.
Copyright 2010 The Buffalo News