HAMILTON — For sale: Two fully equipped, well-maintained, slightly used ambulances.
The town service, mothballed since last fall, appeared to receive the coup de grace last night, as the selectmen are poised to sign a contract with Lyons Ambulance to take over medical transports for at least the next three years, and possibly five.
Resident Pat Roselli is heading up a committee advising the board about the future of ambulance service. The town's service was halted last August after questions about the licensing of both the town's two ambulances and the certifications of the EMTs operating them surfaced.
Since then, Lyons has been providing both basic and advanced life support ambulance service, without a contract, from its locations in Beverly and Danvers.
"We've been very satisfied with the service they've provided us," Roselli said.
Neighboring Wenham, meanwhile, was paying Lyons about $50,000 a year for the same service.
Roselli said if the town wanted to sign a contract with Lyons, the company was willing to do so for the same cost. However, if the two towns agree to keep Lyons as their sole provider for five years, Roselli said, the company would not only base an ambulance in one of the two towns, it wouldn't charge either of them any money for the service.
The basic life-support service would not be dedicated to the two towns, however, and might respond to calls from neighboring communities, Roselli said.
Lyons would continue to provide advanced life support from either its Beverly or Danvers location, he said.
However, about 60 percent of all calls are for basic life support, Roselli said, and having an ambulance stationed in Hamilton or Wenham would decrease those response times.
Town Administrator Candace Wheeler said selectmen in Wenham have already enthusiastically endorsed the proposal.
Selectman Jennifer Scuteri asked if five years wasn't a long time to be locked in, even to a good deal, and Roselli admitted it was "sort of longer than normal."
Ambulance operators have been aggressively pursuing local communities for months, offering free service if one or more towns would consolidate. Roselli said Lyons is willing to forgo its annual fee to keep the hounds at bay and lock up the two towns.
As for exploring options with other providers, Roselli said Lyons has one advantage.
"The devil you know is better than the devil you don't," he said.
Hamilton's ambulance license was suspended in August, after a state overseer found a large number of police officers had falsified medical training records, claiming to have attended courses that were never held.
The state Office of Emergency Medical Services also suspended the EMT licenses of some of those officers and gave others a written reprimand and required them to take additional training.
The town and every officer appealed those rulings.
Among other things, the town was also found not to have proper agreements with Beverly Hospital to oversee some procedures provided on board the ambulance.
The advisory committee told selectmen in April that the Police Department should not be involved in any future operation of the service. Now, it appears no one else will be, either.
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