Jamestown Fire Department’s ambulance and an Alstar EMS ambulance are pictured at UPMC Chautauqua. P-J file photo

A Jamestown city councilman said a contract meant to ensure adequate ambulance coverage within city limits has been “pushed to the wayside” amid other talks of public safety.

Toward the end of Monday’s work session meeting, Councilman Jeff Russell, R-At Large, read aloud the four-year contract signed in October 2020 between the city and Alstar EMS. It replaced the previous agreement that expired in 1999, meaning the city and Alstar had been operating under the terms of the old agreement for more than 20 years.

In full, the contract signed in 2020 reads: “Alstar shall dedicate two fully equipped, appropriately staffed (advanced life support) or (basic life support) level ambulances to serve individuals within city limits 24 hours per day, seven days per week, as requested by the applicable emergency communications center, by or on behalf of a patient, or otherwise. Alstar shall make best efforts to maintain these ambulances at the ALS level. In no event shall Alstar provide less than two providers per ambulance, except in cases of emergency.”

Speaking generally, Russell said the merits of the contract are not being fulfilled at a time when Jamestown is looking to hire more firefighters and Mayor Eddie Sundquist is pushing a new public safety initiative.

“There’s been this push lately, obviously by the mayor, for public safety; having news briefings on public safety. But this contract has been pushed to the wayside. I think as a municipality, and as an administration, we are not holding UPMC as an entity to this contract because this is getting violated every single day, or nearly every single day, and no one is saying anything about it.”

He added, “Instead, what we’re doing is we’re continuing to push more and more on our firefighters. We’re allocating millions of dollars to hire more firefighters. We’re buying second ambulances, and everyone is ignoring this contract.”

Leading up to the contract signing three years ago, Russell questioned Alstar on how it would provide the necessary ambulance services for the city.

In the mid-1990s — when Alstar began providing ambulance services in Jamestown — the city’s fire department averaged about 50 calls for EMS service a year. Matthew Coon, deputy fire chief, said firefighters provided between 1,000 to 1,300 ambulance transports in 2022.

In 2019, then-Mayor Sam Teresi noted that the city owned and operated its own civilian staffed ambulance service — Jamestown Ambulance Service. In the ’80s, Teresi said there were two competing companies, Jamestown Ambulance Service and Chautauqua County Ambulance Service, which was a private company.

When Jamestown General Hospital closed, the civilian service ended.

“The primary provider has always been a separate, usually private, company and the fire department provides backup in a pinch service,” Teresi told The Post-Journal in 2019 as the city was looking over its EMS options. “In a pinch, the Jamestown Fire Department would respond in an as needed basis. When Alstar is out of service doing other things or out of service simply because multiple events are happening at one time, that is when the fire department jumps in during an absolute emergency, in the pinch type of a filler role.”

A year later, when the most recent contract was signed in a ceremony at City Hall that included UPMC officials, Alstar said it was in the process of hiring and training more employees to provide more service in the city.

On Monday, Russell said he was “calling out the administration and the entity of UPMC to stand by this contract, because they’re not doing it now, and they’re violating on a nearly daily basis.”

In speaking to reporters after Monday’s work session meeting, Coon said he would look into the concerns raised by Russell and would be happy to sit down with the City Council as well as with representatives from UPMC from Alstar.

“It’s not lost on me that Alstar does run a large number of calls that the fire department does not respond to,” the deputy fire chief said. “A lot of those have to do with non-emergency transports.”

Coon said the current contract is set to expire in 2024.