By Stephanie Akin
The Record (Bergen County, N.J.)
Copyright 2008 The Record
FAIR LAWN, N.J. — As towns across North Jersey turn to paid professionals to back up shrinking volunteer ambulance services, one municipality says its volunteer corps is thriving.
Fair Lawn’s base of volunteers who respond to emergency calls is growing so much that the ambulance corps broke ground on a new $1.1 million headquarters this month to accommodate an influx of members.
The surge in new volunteers bucks a national trend that industry experts attribute to several factors, including the high level of training required and a waning interest in volunteering in general.
It also represents an about-face for the Fair Lawn corps. Two years ago, the organization had such a hard time filling its responsibilities that it missed about 25 percent of its calls.
The wake-up call came in 2006, when Fair Lawn decided to hire a private ambulance service to back up the volunteers, corps President Dan Furphy said. The paid service bills a patient’s insurer, unlike the volunteers, who provide the service for free.
“We want residents to have a free service,” Furphy said. “There’s no question about it.”
Since then, Furphy said, the corps has relaxed requirements that had little to do with quality of service - such as the length of a shift. It has also scrapped a residency rule, partly to capitalize on workers from towns that have switched to paid services.
The new incentives have increased membership from about 40 active members in 2006 to more than 70, Furphy said.
Mark Lemanski, who lives in Garfield, said he volunteers in Fair Lawn because his parents live there.
Lemanski, 21, also liked Fair Lawn policies that allow him to respond to calls from home and have longer shifts - and therefore get more experience he can put toward a possible future career as a firefighter.
“I could stay at home, be with my family, and have more hours to answer more calls,” Lemanski said.
The corps, which doesn’t get money from the borough, will pay the mortgage for its new headquarters using $9,000 in monthly lease payments it receives from a cellphone tower on the property.
However, innovations that have worked in Fair Lawn might not fit every struggling volunteer service, regional experts say. Smaller towns, for example, don’t have the resources to offer many of the same perks.
“In one town, something is working beautifully, in another town there’s too many roadblocks that get in the way,” said Chuck Chiarello, an executive board member of the New Jersey League of Municipalities who deals with volunteer services.
But Fair Lawn’s success could be a model for similarly sized communities that prefer local, volunteer-staffed ambulances to paid or regional services, Chiarello and other experts said.
The problems facing volunteer ambulance corps were outlined in a 2007 study of the state’s emergency medical services, commissioned by the state Department of Health and Senior Services. The report said the state’s system of volunteer and professional emergency responders was in a state of “near crisis.”
Local communities have tried a variety of solutions, many of which mimic recommendations in the report.
In Passaic County, Haledon, North Haledon and Prospect Park last year started making $1,300 yearly pension payments to members of the towns’ 25-member shared squad who met requirements, such as the length of time they had volunteered and the number of calls they answered per year.
Paramus, unable to recruit enough volunteers to improve its response time, switched in 2007 to a professional service paid for through third-party billing, although volunteers still staff ambulances at town functions.
In Little Ferry, where Department of Public Works employees respond to calls when volunteers are not available, the borough recently hired a part-time employee who works for the Department of Public Works when he isn’t riding ambulances.
That program, which has a $10,000 yearly budget, has been so successful that the borough is looking to fill two more similar positions, Borough Administrator Ken Gabbert said.
Bergen County has also launched a regional service that will provide backup to towns that can’t answer emergency calls. The county is working out agreements with the towns that will use the service and hopes to get the program running by July, spokeswoman Mabel Aragon said.
The surge in volunteers has meant that the Fair Lawn corps turns to the paid service - Hackensack Ambulance - only about once a day, compared with three times a day or more when the arrangement first began, Furphy said. Fair Lawn ambulances also frequently respond to calls in other towns if they are available.
“I attribute it to down-in-the-dirt good recruiting,” Borough Manager Tom Metzler said of the Fair Lawn corps’ growth. “This model is working for us.”
How they did it
When a declining volunteer base forced Fair Lawn to contract with a paid service for backup calls two years ago, the volunteer ambulance corps changed its policies to attract new members. Among its innovations:
* Scrapped a residency requirement.
* Permits younger volunteers. They can’t take on full responsibilities until age 20, but young people often stick, and they recruit family members, too.
* Created an account with baby-sitting money for stay-at-home parents who want to volunteer during the day.
* More flexible shifts. Volunteers can work one or two hours at a time instead of the previously required six.
* Sensitivity to volunteers’ needs when designing the new headquarters, which will include a dormitory for those who want to sleep during shifts and a locked pantry for kosher cooking equipment.
* Required training courses are conducted at the headquarters so volunteers don’t have to travel.
* Increased advertising, such as a banner in the outfield during local baseball games. It attracted five volunteers in the first week.