A pizza or an ambulance?
A choice you may have to make. Not today – but very possibly sometime in the near future. Exactly when depends on what level of emergency medical services (EMS) you want Yorktown to provide its residents – and how much you’re willing to pay for that service. Let me explain.
There are two components to EMS: Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Life Support (ALS). BLS provides limited medical assistance and, when necessary, an ambulance to transport you to the hospital. ALS provides a “flycar” staffed with a paramedic who has advanced emergency medical training and the ability to administer critical drugs and life saving procedures, either onsite, or when needed, in the BLS ambulance that takes you to the hospital.
In Yorktown, ALS is provided via a contract with a third party vendor, Empress, and is funded by a special EMS taxing district. In 2025, in response to increased demand, the Town Board added a second flycar to the Empress contract, which resulted in a $2.71 increase in the EMS tax rate – for a total tax of $84 for a household with a $10,000 assessed value.
BLS services are provided by the Yorktown and Mohegan Volunteer Ambulance Corps (VACs). The Mohegan VAC also covers the northeast portion of Cortlandt. Calls for both VACs have been steadily increasing; in 2025, they responded to over 5,100 calls. And the number of calls is expected to continue to increase as our population ages and more senior developments are built.
The VACs have only three sources of revenue: insurance reimbursements from Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance, donations and fundraising. And that’s the problem.
Revenue is not keeping up with rising expenses. Insurance reimbursements only cover a portion of the actual cost of responding to a call and the VACs are not always able to recoup the balance from residents. Neither the Town of Yorktown or the Town of Cortlandt provide any funds. If anything, it’s the opposite: The Mohegan VAC actually gives the Yorktown ALS fund a portion of the revenue it collects from insurance reimbursements.
The picture is even more dire when it comes to expenses. In addition to rising expenses for basic supplies and equipment (a new ambulance costs between $350,000 - $400,000), the largest anticipated increase in expenses has been – and will continue to be – the need for paid staff to supplement a decreasing number of volunteers available to staff all shifts.
Staffing is critical as there’s a direct correlation between the availability of onsite staff to respond to a call and how long it takes an ambulance to respond to the call. For some medical emergencies, like a heart attack, every minute getting to the hospital counts.
The Mohegan VAC’s 2026 budget includes $650,000 for paid staff. The smaller Yorktown VAC has also found it necessary to hire paid staff to cover some shifts.
Looking ahead, if we want our VACs to be able to continue providing the same level of service we’ve had for years, the VACs need an additional source of revenue.
That’s where the Town Board comes in. And you. Together with Cortlandt, the board is considering hiring a consultant to explore options for supplementing the VACs’ current revenue sources and how any additional revenue could be apportioned between the two VACs, and for the Mohegan VAC, between Cortlandt and Yorktown.
There’s no hiding the fact that the two most likely revenue generating options, creating a special ambulance taxing district, or adding an expense line to the town’s General Fund budget, would mean property owners would have to pay more for EMS: The ambulance district would mean an additional separate tax while adding a new expense line to the General Fund budget would impact the town tax.
But until a study is done, there’s no way of knowing what that increase might be. That’s what the study is for. First, we need to know how much supplemental revenue the VACs will need to maintain the current level of service, and then, and only then, can we begin to calculate what the cost to taxpayers might be.
A study won’t commit the Town Board to a tax increase. What it will do is provide board members, and residents, with a starting point for an informed community dialogue.
What level of EMS service do you want and how much are you willing to pay for that level of service?
The Cortlandt Town Board agreed two months ago to share the cost of the study. The Yorktown Town Board is still considering whether to spend the money for the study. One reason for the delay appears to be that some board members want to avoid any study that would include recommendations that would likely mean a tax increase.
Which is why it’s important – now – for residents to weigh in on the issue. A pizza or an ambulance? Would you consider a tax increase if it meant knowing that in the event of a medical emergency, an ambulance would be available to get you to the hospital in the shortest possible time?
Susan Siegel is a member of the Yorktown Town Board.
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