Saying “Our members are burnt out,” Lisbon Emergency leaders expressed their frustration to elected officials from Lisbon and Bowdoinham about budget cuts made by the Lisbon Town Council that they say have prompted low morale and concern about the future.

The meeting with elected officials May 27 was Lisbon Emergency’s last-ditch effort to ask for better collaboration and more understanding about the department’s dire funding situation after the Lisbon Council cut the EMS budget.

“The officers are burnt out, our boys are burnt out, our members are burnt out, we are at the end of our ropes,” Deputy Chief John Cordts said. “We cannot operate like this, period, end of story.”

He went on to say, “We just want to put our heads through the wall now because we don’t know what to do.”

The officials were meeting to hear results from a study Lisbon Emergency commissioned last year. But the gathering turned into a blunt discussion about the state of morale in the department and how decisions by the towns the department contracts with — Bowdoin, Bowdoinham and Lisbon — have caused instability.

Cordts said that while the department hasn’t lost staff yet, employees are coming to the end of their ropes with the current situation between the department and the towns. He said it often feels like the EMS department is being pulled in three different directions by the towns.

Last month Lisbon councilors cut roughly $65,000 from the department’s requested budget before then approving the town budget for 2027. Because Lisbon funds 60% of the EMS budget while Bowdoin and Bowdoinham split the remaining 40%, the reduction in Lisbon’s budget means the share from the other two towns will also decline, making the cut more severe.

Cordts said the cuts and instability are impacting morale in the department.

That meeting was the first time Bowdoinham Select Board member Allen Acker had heard about the funding reduction in Lisbon. He had strong words for them.

 “Dollars over lives will always be disgusting,” he said.

Bowdoinham Select Board Chair Joanne Joy said the Lisbon Emergency board of directors needs to advocate for the service and regularly communicate with town officials about its needs and constraints rather than working against it.

Acker went further and said Lisbon representatives on the board of directors should be advocating for the service’s needs, not staying silent and then voting to cut funding requests that were already agreed upon by the whole board.

Roger Bickford is the only Lisbon councilor on the Lisbon Emergency board of directors.

Currently on the Lisbon Emergency governing board there are three Lisbon Emergency members, one community member, one community member who works in healthcare, one Bowdoin member, one Bowdoinham member and two Lisbon members.

The Lisbon members are resident Diane Rolf and Bickford. Bickford was one of the council members who voted to cut Lisbon Emergency funding, but later expressed remorse about it. Bickford was not at the meeting last week.

Acker offered to call an emergency town meeting in Bowdoinham to vote on covering some of the funding Lisbon cut.

“I’ll do whatever I can personally to be proactive in helping this if that means I got to call a vote of the Select Board members directly or we have to arrange a general meeting,” he said.

Lisbon Town Council Chair Chris Camire said that the councilors who had originally voted to approve cutting Lisbon Emergency’s funding — most of whom were not at the meeting last week — have since expressed remorse about it.

Camire said he is working with town staff to figure out how they can restore the funding.

Results from the Lisbon Emergency report, presented at the meeting by Chuck McMahan with Compass Navigators Consulting, found that while the service itself is strong, a lack of communication and understanding about the service’s funding needs among the three towns are driving instability in the department.

“We didn’t really see anything broken, as far as service delivery, things seem to be going well,” McMahan said.

He recommended that the three towns work together to recognize Lisbon Emergency’s funding and operational needs to better stabilize the service so it can continue to provide current levels of coverage.

The current one-year contracts with the towns are also a big driver of instability in the service, hindering long-term operational planning.

McMahan suggested the towns enter into a three- to five-year contract with Lisbon Emergency and that the three towns should better communicate with each other about shared service costs rather than only communicating with Lisbon Emergency.

Lisbon Emergency Chief Amy Cailler and Deputy Chief Cordts both said they spend roughly eight months of the year developing budget proposals for one-year contracts with each town, pulling them away from other operational planning for the department.

Those one-year contracts also put the department on shaky financial ground. Not knowing exactly what funding will come each year further complicates the financial situation for services that are already underfunded by insurance companies.

Cordts said the department is good at predicting cost increases for most things and feels confident they can do that in a multiyear contract, but he noted that unfunded state and federal mandates often result in unexpected cost increases, which can be hard to predict.

If the department could contract with at least one other town for services that would lower costs by thousands of dollars for the three towns, he said.

McMahan argued that municipal funding for EMS services does not reflect a failing business model, rather it should be viewed as providing important revenue that departments need to continue to provide services within their business model.