The Fiscal Committee of the Board of Representatives held budget presentations on March 24, 2026, starting at 7:30 PM, in Stamford, Connecticut. Presentations covered the operating and capital budgets for several city departments and services, including Stamford EMS, Facilities Maintenance, Health and Human Services, and the Office of Public Safety, Health and Welfare. Representatives asked questions regarding call volumes, staffing, facility conditions, energy efficiency, and program expansions.
All right, it is now 730 officially. Good evening, everyone. This is the fiscal committee of the board of representatives. Budget presentations. And we're going to start out of order a little bit tonight. Stafford EMS is going to present first. And I have Eddie Brown and Mark Kersman here. Which of you would like to start? I'll make a few introductory remarks and then turn it over to Eddie if that's okay. That's fine. And do you need to present? Beg your pardon? Do you need to make a present? Do you need to present anything? Like uh slides or budget, something like that. I Eddie, I think you have control over any slides, right? Yeah, yeah. Those are the slides we sent in. So um well, good evening, everybody. I'll uh right. I'll I'll keep my remarks brief. My name is Mark Kurzman. I'm a longtime Stanford resident, and I have the privilege of serving as the chairman of the board of Stanford EMS. Uh I'm joined this evening by senior staff at SEMS, Chief Edward Brown, and I believe Eddie, you have with you assistant chiefs, uh Jessica Anderson and Malcolm Dean, both of who were promoted to that position in October of 2025. Um I'm sure um committee members, you're all familiar with SEMS, but just in brief, we are the nonprofit company that serves the community by responding 24 hours, seven days per week to thousands of requests for emergency medical assistance. We operate out of five ambulance stations and also during peak hours, have a basic life support ambulance that operates uh mostly out of downtown. Uh, we're also fortunate to have a complement of trained volunteers who augment our staffing, which um currently consists of roughly 82 paramedics and EMTs. We pride ourselves on the high quality of care we deliver to the citizens of the city of Stanford and the visitors uh here to the city. Um I'm pleased to tell you if you're not already aware that we were recently reaccredited by CAS, the commission on accreditation of ambulance services, after they performed a very robust review of our policies and procedures and vehicles and equipment. We are one of only two ambulance services in the state of Connecticut that are uh CAS accredited. Uh the high quality of care we deliver to the city um is uh is done in an environment of a very high call volume. During our last fiscal year, we responded to approximately 18,500 calls, and during this fiscal year, we're on pace to exceed even that number. Um in terms of economics, we have little control over our revenue. Uh 50% of our uh patient mix are Medicare patients, uh and the rest are a combination of Medicaid and private insurance and a small percentage of self-pay. But um, yeah, as I'm sure you're aware, Medicare and Medicaid rates are set by the respective government entities. Uh, and there's not a lot of flexibility in terms of uh of the rates that are paid to us by insurance companies. So we are reliant on the city of Stanford for at least a portion of our budget, and hope that you feel that um the city is getting good value for uh uh for that portion of the budget that that that we ask for. Um of course our most valuable resource is our dedicated field and supervisory staff. You're gonna be hearing from uh Chief Brown, that who's uh the senior member of our supervisory staff in a moment. Um so uh bottom line is uh we are operating under uh you know very high volume circumstances with uh you know limited control over revenues. We do control our expenses, but so many of our expenses are outside our control. The average cost of a of a of a of a what we call a truck, the larger ambulances that our paramedics operate out of, is about $300,000 now, up from 200,000 just a few years ago. Uh and obviously we need to keep our vehicles and equipment in in good shape so we're constantly rotating our fleet. Uh and um, you know, uh subject to those restraints. We feel like we're operating efficiently, economically, and delivering high value to the city. So with those words, um, and and with my appreciation from hearing from us tonight, I'll turn the presentation over to Chief Brown. Thanks, Mark. Um, yeah, he Mark touched on a lot of the points that uh I'm gonna go over on this slide that you see before you. Our our total funding request for this year is uh 2675192. That accounts for about 20% of our uh operating budget, as Mark mentioned.