By Tara Fischer

Staff Writer

Town of Berlin is weighing a request to the county about funding for in-town fire and EMS services.

At a work session of the Berlin mayor and council with the Berlin Fire Company and Emergency Medical Services on Monday, town officials proposed a new, simplified means for the fire and EMS teams to receive financial assistance from the county government.

Berlin Fire Company President David Fitzgerald and Fire Chief Andrew Grunden were present at this week’s work session, where they heard the council’s fresh funding proposition.

Currently, each year, the municipality seeks an unrestricted grant from the Worcester County Commissioners, and a majority of the funding is provided to the fire company and the company’s EMS for in-town service. The county pays the company and EMS for out-of-town calls for service based on a formula.

According to Berlin Mayor Zack Tyndall, Councilmembers Steve Green and Council Vice Dean Burrell have discussed the idea of changing the way fire and EMS receive their portion of funding from the county. If adopted, the new method would see the Town of Berlin remove itself from the process and instead let the emergency services negotiate with Worcester officials directly through a task force of fire officials and county staff and commissioners.

Under this procedure, the county government would use its funding formula and, through discussions with fire and EMS, determine how much to grant the departments, instead of giving the money to the town, which would then offer the funds to the fire company and EMS.

Essentially, the middleman, the Town of Berlin, would be eliminated from the process in exchange for not receiving the annual grant from the county like other municipalities.

“Sometime in the spring, near the end of the budget process, we talked about the annual gap between the ask and what the town’s able to budget,” Green said. “I think it was the mayor that brought up the possibility of the county eventually taking over funding, instead of the town’s annual grant, and what that might look like. I think it’s a consideration for us to explore.”

While able to meet the budget request on the fire side in the current process, the EMS annually receives less from the town than requested because of budget constraints.

Tyndall added the emergency services would then have a method to ascertain how much funding they will require annually to operate efficiently. Reducing the town’s involvement could simplify that process.

“We’re saying it would be a discussion with the commissioners that the town no longer seeks unrestricted grant funding from the commissioners every single year,” the mayor said, addressing the emergency team personnel. “And in lieu, allow you all to use the funding formula you have with [the commissioners] … We’re saying that you do a lot of the reporting for them already, that we would say the town is going to take a step back from that and let you all handle it.”

The potential funding method is not definite. Tyndall will make the formal recommendation to the Worcester County Commissioners and gauge their interest in updating the procedure.

Green asked Fitzgerald if he foresaw any pushback from the county on the proposal. Fitzgerald said he would imagine concerns could surface over the precedent it would set with other municipalities but looked forward to hearing how the proposal is received by the county.