HAMPDEN – More than 100 residents turned out for a community forum on Jan. 21 to discuss options for handling two major problems facing the town – waste and recycling costs and ambulance service.

Trash

Selectman John Flynn said the “dump” was opened in 1967 and was later capped. It became the town’s transfer station in the early 2000s and has served as a location for residents to take their waste so that it could be hauled away. The trash was then sent out for incineration and the recycling was sold, often to China.

In recent years however, the recyclables market has collapsed. Interim Town Administrator Bob Markel said China no longer buys recyclables at the usual rate of “contamination,” the mixture of non-recyclables into recycled items. The previous allowable rate was two percent contamination, Markel said. It is now a tenth of that.

“What we used to get as a revenue stream for the town is no longer that,” Flynn said Markel explained that waste management incurs four different costs to the town – the hauling away of trash, the disposal of trash, the hauling away of recyclables, and now the disposal of recyclables.

The material recycling facility (MRF) in Springfield, which processes recyclables, is raising its rate from $0 to $93 per ton. The company pushed back the date to sign the contract until the end of February. Originally, the MRF had announced a deadline of Jan. 30 for accepted contracts. No other facilities offer a lower fee than the MRF, Markel said.

In 2018, 220 tons of trash and 191 tons of recycling was hauled away from Hampden, which translated to 90 hauls total.

Republic Services, with which Hampden has been contracted, is increasing its trash hauling rates from $131 per haul to $310 per haul. Their disposal rates are also increasing from $76 to $97 beginning July 1. This represents a $38,000 increase cost to the town.

A total of 543 households, approximately 28 percent of the town, use the transfer station. If the town were to shoulder the increased cost to residents though raising the price of bag fees, it would mean an additional $70 per household per year.

Markel has put out bids for waste removal and three came back. Although they had yet to be fully reviewed, he said one company submitted a “significantly lower” rate.

A resident suggested discontinuing the transfer station and pursuing a discounted town-wide contract with a private hauler. Select Board Chair Donald Davenport noted that a private hauler would likely raise their rates to be competitive with municipal servicers, such as Republic Services.

Dennis Hackett, an employee at the transfer station, said there were a few cost-cutting measures that could be implemented, such as extending the pickup schedule to every other week and residents limiting the weight of their bags to the recommended weight of 10 pounds for a small bag and 25 pounds for a large bag.

Markel mentioned that the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is pursuing the removal of glass jars and bottles from the waste stream in the next couple years. He said the town could either send glass to Quebec to be crushed or purchase a machine to crush the glass. The DEP will be offering  subsidies for groups of three or more municipalities that buy the machines. The towns would then have to decide what to do with crushed glass product.

In a straw poll conducted by Selectwoman Mary Ellen Glover, an overwhelming majority of residents expressed a preference for raising the cost of both bags and permit fees rather than one or the other or for paying for the increased cost through taxes.

Ambulance

Switching topics, Davenport explained that in recent years the town has been using American Medical Response (AMR) for ambulance service and was served by an ambulance parked in East Longmeadow. Now that East Longmeadow has purchased their own municipal ambulance AMR has moved its ambulance to Cottage Street in Springfield. This has resulted in significantly longer wait times.

Davenport said the national standard for ambulance wait time is 8 to 10 minutes. Between Nov. 1, 2019 and Jan. 19, the town's average ambulance wait time was 24 minutes.

The police and fire departments respond to medical calls and provide first aid until an ambulance arrives to transport the patient to a hospital.

Markel said the town has option to either leave the situation as it is or to find a company that will house a staffed ambulance in town. Three bids came in to do exactly that.

AMR told the town they can furnish the town with a basic life support (BLS) ambulance, which is staffed by EMTs and can handle many medical emergencies, for $500,000. An advanced life support ambulance (ALS) ambulance is staffed by paramedics and contains more equipment and medicine and can be had for $900,000. National Ambulance also submitted a bid with roughly the same prices as AMR.

Action Ambulance offered a setup in which they would staff an ALS ambulance in Hampden at a cost of $330,000 per year. The town would then lease an ambulance for BLS for approximately $100,000. An additional cost of $144,000 per year would be needed to maintain a staff of 10 per-diem first responders to use in conjunction with the fire department’s existing three full-time people.

Markel said this model is in use in other towns and has the benefit of revenue sharing. Davenport explained that other towns charge for their services through insurance companies and Medicare. According to the proposal put forth by the fire department, insurance charges for a BLS ambulance service could recoup around $150,000 per year and the town would benefit from two ambulances.

Matthew Sterling of the Hampden Fire Department said a maximum of $488 can be charged per ambulance call, so people shouldn’t be afraid of enormous bills from the service.

When discussing the need for the service, a man said he was hesitant to move to Hampden with his young family a few years ago because the town does not have a full-time fire department that could transport him to the hospital if needed.

One resident asked how the fire department assesses the urgency of a call. Sterling said they do not consider one call more urgent or important than another.

“You might stub your toe, you might have a heart attack, you might have trouble breathing,” he said pointing to three people in the audience. “To each one of you, it may be the most serious crisis of your life.”

Another person commended the fire department for their professionalism and medical knowledge when he needed them recently. The department was given a round of applause.

During the second straw poll of the evening, the majority of people present said 15 minutes was the longest acceptable wait time for an ambulance and that to assure shorter arrival times they would be willing to support “significant expenditures and tax increases.”

The residents largely favored the town having its own ambulance, expanding the fire department personnel to handle medical calls and the idea of putting a one-year plan together while researching other options. Few of the people in attendance supported continuing use a private contractor with an ambulance housed at the police department.

“It is your money. You need to know the challenges that we all face,” Flynn said, urging people to consider the balance between services and the potential tax increases to pay for them. “At what cost do you feel we have the service you expect? What do you want from Hampden?”