Officials look to recoup costs of responding to car crashes

Out-of-town drivers don’t pay for services rendered at scene

By Owen Boss

GARDNER — Mayor Mark Hawke, Fire Capt. Robert Newton and Police Chief Neil Erickson have proposed implementing an ordinance that would establish a program to recover the money it costs to deploy city public safety services to motor vehicle accidents outside of the scope of basic crime prevention, investigation and fire prevention. The meeting of officials, which occurred at the regular meeting of the Public Safety Commission, followed recent discussions between Mr. Hawke and the Cost Recovery Corp. “We hope to work with the Cost Recovery Corp. or a similar company to have recover the money associated with public safety calls,” said Mr. Hawke. “The theory behind it is that the Fire Department and Police Department are doing all of this paperwork, and responding to the scene of these accidents, and if you are a local resident, your real estate taxes will pay for those services, but if you don’t live locally you don’t pay for anything.” Chief Erickson said that the majority of the crashes that occur within the city are caused by or involve residents from outside the city, which means tax-paying residents are forced to subsidize the additional costs. “If you think about it, annually we deal with 700 accidents that police and fire respond to,” said Chief Erickson. “And of those accidents, about 60 percent of them are out-of-town drivers.” At the meeting, City Councilor Alice Anderson voiced several concerns about the ordinance, which included wondering if it is really necessary for both fire and police to respond to minor accidents. “When dealing with these hazmat situations like gasoline spills you really never know, and consequently that is often why fire is responding to something that seems innocuous to me as a driver passing the accident,” said Ms. Anderson. “It seems like many times it is hit or miss.” In response, Chief Erickson said it is always better to send too many people to the scene of an accident than too few, because that decision could ultimately be the difference between a victim living or dying. “It all depends on the information we receive. We get a call that says ‘hey there is a bad accident and there are probably people hurt,’” the chief said, “and we start rolling people, as opposed to having us get all the way out to the scene and calling back for fire and having them be five minutes out. For injured people it is always better to roll if there is any question whatsoever with the severity.” Capt. Newton also stressed the importance of sending out too many vehicles to an accident scene than too few, and said that in his experience it could make a huge difference. “I can say firsthand that one night years ago I got a call for a report of a car up against a telephone pole,” said Mr. Newton. “That may seem like a normal call, but when we arrived there were three people trapped inside the car and one man actually died in the back seat and the only report we had was that there was a car next to a pole and that was it. We can go one way or the other, and as the chief said it comes down to the information we receive.” Under the proposed ordinance, the city’s police and fire departments would initiate service fees for the delivery of police and fire department services, personnel, supplies and equipment to the scene of motor vehicle accidents. The service fees will be initially filed to the motor vehicle insurance company representing an add-on cost of the claim for damages of the vehicles, property and/or injuries. Although not many local communities have worked with Cost Recovery Corp., Mr. Hawke said that the few that did said it was very successful. “These are a lot bigger in the Midwest and South, but in Massachusetts there are several communities looking into it, and as far as I know right now Bernardston is the only community that has adopted the CRC and they are approaching a year with them now,” said Mr. Hawke. “Their fire chief recently called ours and said things have been going swimmingly and he had nothing but good things to say about the process.” Following the approval of the public safety commission, Mr. Hawke said he expects the ordinance will be sent to first printing at the next City Council meeting. oboss@thegardnernews.com

Appeared on Page 1 on 8/1/2008 (Vol. 206 No. 181)