By Gail Geraghty,Staff Writer

BUCKFIELD – A 34-year-old tradition of not charging for rescue calls has come to an end in Buckfield.

Voters at Thursday’s special town meeting agreed to have the town take over the independent Buckfield Rescue Unit Inc., which was formed in 1971.

The town will hire two full-time emergency medical technicians to answer calls from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. The fee for calls will be $325 for basic service, and more than $500 for advanced life support. The fees will cover most of the costs of the service.

The paid crew will be housed in a bay in the fire station. The 14 active volunteer members of the department would be paid minimum wage to answer calls evenings and weekends.

Rescue Chief Tony Lord said it has become nearly impossible to find volunteers to fill the weekday hours.

“There’s a lot of people that have come and gone, and there’s a certain burnout rate” after being on rescue for many years, he said.

“This is not what we wanted to do,” Lord told the crowd of about 55 residents gathered at Buckfield Junior/Senior High School. “Unless we hire a day crew we won’t have the coverage we need.”

Charles and Judy Berg thought the decision was being made without enough thought. Charles Berg offered an amendment to adopt the change on a provisional basis while studying the matter further, but that motion failed.

Lord said the rescue unit looked for viable alternatives, but found none.

If the town contracted with PACE Ambulance in Norway or United Ambulance in Lewiston, either service would have a response time of at least 30 minutes, which is unacceptable, he said.

In order to meet state laws for licensing rescue services, the response time must be under 20 minutes.

Rescue unit member Heather Richardson said her former employer, Lowell Lumber of Buckfield, was always accommodating when she went on calls. But now she works in Turner and can’t get away.

Pointing to member John Wiley, she said, “He has done all the calls lately, but he can’t do it all by himself.”

Selectman Oscar Gammon said the lack of daytime coverage is a critical issue that cannot be put off any longer.

“I’ve been dead set against it, but it has come to the point where we got to do something,” he said.

The town will bill the patient’s insurance company for the transport, and officials agreed there will likely be a certain percentage of bills that will have to be written off because people cannot afford to pay.

Town Manager Glen Holmes said a conservative estimate of the cost of the service would be 8 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value.

The service will cost the town about $55,050 and generate around $45,800, leaving about $9,000 to be made up through taxes, Holmes said.