Joint NYC Council Committees Hearing on Ambulance Response Times and Intro 990 - October 20, 2026

On Tuesday, October 20, 2026, at 10:00 AM in Hearing Room 2 at 250 Broadway, the NYC Council Committees on Hospitals and Fire & Emergency Management held a joint oversight hearing on ambulance response times and considered Introduction 990, which would require emergency notifications through Notify NYC when FDNY EMS has more than 25 pending ambulance dispatches. Chair Mercedes Narcisse (Hospitals) and Chair Joanne Ariola (Fire & Emergency Management) co-chaired. Committee members present were Narcisse, Aldebol, Brooks-Powers, Epstein, Farías, Gutiérrez, and Sanchez; other council members attending included Ariola, Won, Schulman, Paladino, Maloney, Restler, De La Rosa, Brewer, Dinowitz, and Speaker Julie Menin. The oversight item was filed and Intro 990 was laid over.

Public Comments & Testimony

• Jennifer Daly, mother of 14-year-old Kevin Daly, testified by Zoom that on September 28 her son suffered a stroke at St. Francis Preparatory School; the school nurse called 911 three times, no ambulance arrived, and the family drove him to New York Presbyterian Queens before transfer to Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. She described the ordeal as unacceptable and urged action.
• Michael Greco, president of Local 2507, said EMS is running out of time. He cited the controller's report showing life-threatening ambulance response times increased more than 41% since fiscal 2015 and that more than 500 EMTs left in fiscal 2026 alone. He argued the core problem is retention, not training, noting an EMT with five years' experience earns about $60,000 compared with about $109,000 for a firefighter.
• Vincent Barrialli, president of Local 3621, said low wages and inferior benefits are confirmed by the mayor's management report and controller's report. He stated cardiac arrest survival rates have fallen from 35% to 16%, that EMS has about 25% of FDNY staffing while handling about 1.6 million calls annually compared with fire's 500,000, and that fire receives roughly 84% of FDNY's budget while EMS receives about 16%. He called for treating EMS as a co-equal branch and for pay and benefit parity.
• Anthony Lamarena, vice president of Local 3621, provided ambulance off-service counts at 2 p.m. for the prior week: 138, 89, 92, 68, 94, 101, and 122. During his testimony, he said 112 ambulances were off service and 51 calls were holding, most for over three hours. He described multiple fatal delays, said EMS has failed because the government failed EMS, and cited 14 member suicides since 2020.
• Logan Clark and Valerie Goudino of the Independent Budget Office testified that MMR data show end-to-end ambulance response times increased by nearly three minutes since FY22 to more than 13 minutes; daily ambulance hours fell nearly 10% from 8,900 to 8,100; hospital-run ambulances made up about one-third of tours; and 11 hospital systems removed ambulances from the 911 system in FY26. They noted EMT share of the EMS workforce fell from 69% to 63% and that promotional firefighter exam cycles contribute to attrition.
• Joseph Raineri of the Regional EMS Council of New York City opposed single-paramedic staffing, saying dual medics are clinically necessary for complex patients. He supported pay parity, better work-life balance, clear career paths, and said efficiency measures alone will not fix the system.
• Several current and former EMS workers testified about long waits, low pay, staffing shortages, hospital ambulance withdrawals, and 911 misuse. Christian Bear Lopez, a paramedic, cited the death of Lieutenant Nelson Cito and asked why the council is not holding a hearing on Intro 0521. Gerardney Williams described 25-minute travel times across Manhattan, said the city receives about 6,000 calls a day, and called mutual aid shameful. Andrew Freena said paramedics arrived within 10 minutes in only 26% of calls in the last month. Jack Chapman cited a 40-minute response to a life-threatening seizure at a hotel and said ALS call volume has increased 22.9% since 2015. Stephen Northmore gave multiple examples of patients waiting 30 minutes to three hours, including a patient who died from a manageable bleed. Christopher King said the government has failed EMS and that about 20 members he knows are considering retirement.
• James Kerr, former executive director of NYC EMS from 1980 to 1988, said response time is a symptom, not an isolated issue. He recommended a mayor-directed EMS improvement task force that would submit an implementation plan within 90 days, including clinically appropriate response targets such as ALS units reaching patients 95% of the time within six minutes.
• Tyler Weaver, whose son Nicholas Costello died in 2023 after a 20-minute ambulance wait, said cardiac arrest revival rates have fallen to 16% and that average response times have returned to 13 minutes for the first time in 40 years, with monthly averages reaching 15 minutes and the Bronx 18 minutes. He urged contract resolution and pay increases.
• Cheryl Bernard, a retired NYPD communications supervisor, supported EMS pay raises but argued DOT bike lanes, bus lanes, and street closures are major causes of delayed ambulance travel. She opposed giving 911 callers ETAs because traffic conditions can change and create legal risk.
• Chowdhury Mahmood, an FDNY technology staff member, testified about repeated CAD system crashes and an approximately $20.66 million no-bid sole-source contract with Accenture for the EMS CAD system, alleged retaliation against him, and asked the committees to require independent technical certification and milestone-by-milestone accounting before the EMS CAD system goes live.

Discussion Items

• Chair Ariola opened by noting that over the summer, 700 calls were held by the EMS system because of staffing shortages and that Intro 990 would tell New Yorkers when help is not moments away. She said EMS workers are underpaid and that the city has struggled to provide timely emergency care.
• Chair Narcisse, a registered nurse, described emergency department overcrowding and said reports indicate H+H patients waited an average of 12.8 hours to be transferred from the ED to an inpatient bed between 2022 and 2025. She noted New York City has 49 hospital emergency departments, including 11 H+H hospitals serving more than 8.5 million New Yorkers, and called health care a human right.
• FDNY Chief of Department John Esposito acknowledged rising response times and said addressing them is a top priority. He testified that average ambulance in-service hours fell from 8,891 in FY22 to 8,109 in FY26 while life-threatening calls rose from 564,412 to 610,771. He said 358 EMTs and 63 paramedics left EMS to become firefighters in 2026, 19 hospitals have closed since 2003, and the 911 system is about two-thirds municipal and one-third hospital-run. He described mitigation efforts including 14 paramedic response units, a centralized resource coordination center, borough-based command, mutual aid, redeploying offline members, and exploring AI and a new EMS CAD system. On Intro 990, he said FDNY does not believe the likely volume of notifications would provide useful information and is concerned about confusing or frightening the public, but is open to further discussion.
• FDNY Chief Paul Miano and Chief Denise Werner answered detailed questions. For the St. Francis Prep case, they said the call came during a period with more than 100 extra calls, no EMS call taker was available, the call went through the overflow position, and it was classified as an unknown condition rather than a stroke call; an ambulance was dispatched but arrived after the family left. They acknowledged the response was unacceptable and said they are improving NYPD-EMS communications. For Speaker Menin's district incident, the call was triaged as a segment 5 injury, ambulances were redirected to life-threatening calls, and fire engines are not dispatched to segment 4 or 5 injuries and cannot transport patients. They said an average of more than 90 ambulances are off service per day, overwhelmingly due to staffing; EMS budgeted headcount is 4,500 but actual staffing is below 4,100; and 163 EMT trainees are currently in the academy, down from 200, with graduation expected in mid-December. They also said the hospital liaison unit pilot ended in late May because it did not produce a large enough systemwide impact, though citywide ambulance turnaround time increased by about two minutes after it ended.
• Dr. Josh Motzquist of NYC Health + Hospitals testified that the current average time from ED arrival to first provider is 29 minutes, improved from 33 minutes; the average ED-to-inpatient-bed transfer time after admission is about 270 minutes. He said Lincoln Hospital sees about 37 patients per hour at peak, H+H recorded about 1.1 million ED visits in 2025, and patient acuity has increased. He reported that the ED Leads program had 30,400 encounters in 2025, over 6,500 referrals to outpatient clinics, and over 3,600 naloxone kits distributed. He said H+H does not yet have data on New York City Care's effect on ED utilization and would follow up on several programs.
• Speaker Julie Menin said EMS workers are understaffed and underpaid, with EMT pay of about $18 an hour and average service under three years. She cited a 16-year-old in her district injured during a basketball game who waited 30 minutes before a parent called a private ambulance, with FDNY calling back nearly three hours later, and called the current average response time of about 13 minutes wholly unconscionable.
• Council Members Paladino, Shulman, Brooks-Powers, Epstein, Brewer, Sanchez, Restler, and Aldebol raised pay parity, recruitment and retention, transparency of response data, NYPD responding before EMS, hospital handoffs, street closures, siren noise, and public education. Council Member Sanchez noted that a 90-year-old constituent waited 25 minutes for an ambulance and that NYPD officers often arrive first and sometimes transport patients; FDNY said it does not systematically track NYPD arrivals or transports and would follow up.

Key Outcomes

• Oversight item T2026-2406 on ambulance response times was heard and filed by the committee.
• Introduction 0990-2026 was heard and laid over by the committee; no vote to advance was taken.
• FDNY stated it is open to further discussion on Intro 990 but does not support the bill as written, citing potential public confusion and the likelihood of high notification volume.
• Council members and union leaders repeatedly called for EMS pay parity, uniform status, civil service recognition, improved recruitment and retention, and stronger public education about when to call 911.
• Written testimony was accepted for 72 hours after the hearing by email to testimony@council.nyc.gov.