EMS members protest administrative cut during council sesion

EMS members protest administrative cut during council session

By Michael Gannon, Register Staff

June 13, 2000

STRATFORD — Nearly 100 members of the Stratford Emergency Medical Service demonstrated outside Town Hall Monday during a Town Council meeting to get their administrator’s position restored.

Barring that, members were at least seeking concrete answers as to where the council is heading with a planned restructuring of the all-volunteer service.

In other business, the council set Nov. 7 as the date for the election of a new councilman at large. Michael Koperwhats stepped down from the position Friday due to his recent diagnosis of cancer.

Members of EMS, both outside Town Hall and speaking during the public session of the council meeting, said they are concerned with both a lack of information coming from the town and the future of the 225-member volunteer organization. What raised their concern was the council vote on a budget that eliminated the $51,000-a-year job of 19-year EMS Administrator Bruce Connery.

Both the council and Town Manager Mark Barnhart have maintained the position was cut to save money.

The council has directed Barnhart to devise a new management plan.

"This is not a rally for Bruce Connery," said EMS volunteer Christopher Lovell prior to the meeting. "This is about a position. If you want to fire the man, then fire the man and give him due process. And give us the position back."

Lovell presented the council with a petition bearing 737 signatures of town residents calling for the council to support an independent volunteer service.

"You can’t save money by hiring a paid worker to do what I’m doing for free," he said. "It just doesn’t make sense."

In a letter to the volunteers dated June 7, Barnhart called for the volunteers to work with him over the next several months while a new administration plan is devised. Barnhart wrote, "to date no such plan exists" though the volunteers are concerned with rumored solutions of placing them under the direction of the fire or police departments.

Lovell said there is great concern about mingling paid and volunteer services, and just who would have authority under such an arrangement.

"Someone who has been doing this for 10 or 15 years, or someone who is there because it is now his job, because he’s being paid to be there?" he asked. He said Barnhart’s letter is somewhat nebulous, and that the members would like information that is more concrete.

Councilman William Cabral, R-7, who later would be unanimously voted in as the new council chairman replacing Koperwhats, sought to assure the members that Stratford is committed to maintaining the volunteer service.