BRATTLEBORO — The town of Brattleboro will not renew its contract with Rescue Inc., which provides ambulance and EMT services to Brattleboro and 14 surrounding communities.
The recent news came abruptly and was followed with presentations that appeared to place the reasons for this decision on Rescue Inc.'s leadership and, to a larger degree, cost.
As the board of Rescue Inc., we acknowledge the town's decision, and we want to communicate a few important pieces of information to our communities.
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Most importantly, our organization is healthy and ready to serve. We will do just that for our remaining communities, as we have for decades, with professionalism, an unparalleled quality of care, and little to no increase in cost to our member towns.
Though Brattleboro has been a central point of operations for 56 years and we will miss serving the people of this community, we remain ready and willing to serve our other towns.
This change will allow us to look at how we allocate our resources to better serve these communities, as well as other local communities that are taking this opportunity to see what Rescue Inc. can offer them for service.
This might mean some relocation of assets, but there's plenty of work to do. We need all the staff we have, so we see no need for a reduction of our workforce. Whatever decisions we make, know that they are made because we are an organization that is committed to bringing health and benefit to all it does.
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There have been many statements about Rescue Inc. in the past weeks; we disagree with many of these statements, but we choose to focus on providing the best care that we can to our communities.
We will be holding an information session for the Selectboards of our remaining member towns in May and will address misleading and false information during that meeting. We will do this as we have for years: in an open, honest, and straightforward way, inviting discussion and interaction.
To the residents of Brattleboro, we want to thank you for your trust over this past half century. We will continue to honor our responsibilities to you for the remainder of our contract (through the end of June), and we will also continue to offer American Heart Association and other health-care-related training to the community.
We send our best wishes to the town as it embarks on this new endeavor. We know how challenging it can be.
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Finally, but not in any way least importantly, we want to take this moment to publicly state how proud we are of our Rescue Inc. team, past and present.
We stand behind the incredible commitment and quality of our team's care. They are and will continue to be the best in the region.
These are the best-trained emergency service professionals you'll find, and they commit themselves to providing exactly what's needed in people's most-vulnerable moments.
As a board, we are grateful to our team of professionals and the leadership of Chief Drew Hazelton. Drew has been the driving force behind the quality of care and reliability of service that is the hallmark of Rescue Inc.