West Stockbridge — With emergency services staffing deemed an “ongoing issue” for West Stockbridge by Select Board Chair Kathleen Keresey, the group’s January 16 presentation from consultant Jeff Blanchard of JB Consulting Group detailed how his data-driven analysis could aid ini the board’s decision on whether sharing those services with another municipality would be beneficial to the town.
Retired from the Hanover Fire Department, a 43-year tenure that ended in a decade-long stint as its deputy fire chief, Blanchard’s clients include Lee and Stockbridge, towns that are considering a possible merger of fire and emergency services. He said his final report to their select boards is due at the end of the month. “The work in Lee and Stockbridge is trying to see if there is a way to improve service delivery to both communities by making some changes,” Blanchard said.
Lee residents recently took the first step to approve a new public safety complex, with final consent slated for a May town vote.
Blanchard witnessed the growth of Hanover’s department and said he now aims to pass on his knowledge to other communities desiring a review of their response times, coverage areas, possible future acquisitions, or changes to their emergency services. He said he found a West Coast software program that helped predict how Hanover would meet future demands for service. “When I retired, I thought this would be a great service I could provide to communities,” Blanchard said.
He explained that he creates a computer model of the emergency services department encompassing the current area of coverage including station locations, apparatus, staffing, and dispatch. Next, he enters the call data from the department’s past five years into the program, identifying the site of each call on a map, with a prediction as to the response time from the time of the call to when help arrived on scene. With predictive modeling, he said the data is then manipulated to predict or show what would happen to response times and other factors given the changes the department is seeking to make that can include relying on a mutual aid partner, adding more staff per shift, or whether coverage can be maintained if a new population enters the market, such as a new senior living center. “We try to figure out what changes you can make to improve service delivery or save money or both of those, if possible,” Hanover said.
His presentation reflected actions taken by other community service providers as a result of the modeling system: the Commonwealth cities of Brockton, New Bedford, Sandwich, Taunton, and Quincy.
“We wanted to be data driven, we wanted to look at where the calls were,” said Stockbridge Town Manager Michael Canales, who attended the meeting remotely. He said the information plotted out showed the emergency services coverage in the Interlaken area to be “stressed.”
“Just to be able to look at the maps and say, ‘Alright, well how would we remedy these,’” Canales said. “How would we fix these issues? Not that we’ve come up with solutions yet, but it’s opening up the questions, and it’s helping us identify where stuff could be located—equipment, resources, and the rest—in order to provide the maximum coverage for our community.”
Canales said Lee and Stockbridge officials had a lot of questions and sought a way to “gather as much data as we [could] to try to make the best long-term solution for the two communities.”
With ambulance calls increasing, expanding emergency medical services will be a key component over the next decade, Canales said. “At times, Southern Berkshire [County] is short on coverage, where you can have ambulances come significant distances due to the lack of how many shifts are available,” he said.
Keresey said the number of volunteers for such services is “diminishing,” with Blanchard’s data helpful to determine the future needs of the department.
Member Andrew Krouss agreed and said getting volunteers is “tough” but that the West Stockbridge population isn’t decreasing. “What’s your second-best alternative [to recruiting volunteers] is maybe, and this is my opinion, looking at joining forces or having other backups in case you are short on a run or short on an emergency call,” he said.
At the meeting, the Select Board also:
- Unanimously approved signing a letter to be sent to the Environmental Protection Agency that had already been executed by the Select Boards of Great Barrington, Lee, Lenox, Sheffield and Stockbridge. The letter advocated the use of rail as the transportation method for a decade-plus-long program aimed at cleaning up the Housatonic River. The transportation routes show that West Stockbridge will be directly impacted by the proposed truck transport of materials in the project, Keresey said.
- Approved April 20, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., as the casual Berkshire Velo Bike Event in West Stockbridge that will raise funds for the nonprofit group Berkshire Velo, with the announcement presented by the group’s Treasurer Phil Gentile; and
- Agreed to sign a letter in support of a grant for the TriTown Connector, a micro transit nonprofit service based in Great Barrington that provides transit services for all age and income residents.
Click here to view the presentation by Jeff Blanchard to the West Stockbridge Select Board showing how his analysis could determine whether a town merger of emergency services with Richmond would be beneficial to its scope, quality and cost of response.
