East Hampton Ambulance Volunteers Ask Court To Let Them Sue Village Over Seizure of Funding

Members of the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association have asked the Suffolk County Supreme Court for permission to file a lawsuit against the Village of East Hampton seeking to take back more than $386,000 that the association says the village improperly seized when it took control of the ambulance corps last spring.

In its petition to the court, the association says that it was hamstrung financially and logistically in the wake of the village’s abrupt takeover of the East Hampton Village Volunteer Ambulance last spring, preventing it from hiring an attorney and filing its legal claim within 90 days of when the funds and other assets were seized by the village, as typically required.

In an affidavit submitted with the appeal to file a late notice of claim, the “newly elected president” of the association, Teresa Bertha, says that village seized the association assets on June 1, including its checking account, which had a balance of $386,717 on May 31, the petition says.

“As a consequence of their unlawful seizure of our bank account and our equipment, we had no funds to hire the services of a lawyer to contest this unlawful taking,” Bertha attests in the petition document. “It took about four months for the EHVAA to raise the money to hire a lawyer through community donations. We are now in a position to commence legal proceedings.”

The petition was filed on November 15.

Bertha was “terminated” as a volunteer EMT for the village by a unanimous vote of the Village Board on November 17.

Mayor Jerry Larsen said this week that he had no knowledge of the court petition and that Bertha’s dismissal had nothing to do with the rift between some association members and the village.

“I knew nothing about this, but, wow, this will definitely end our relationship with the association,” the mayor said Tuesday.

Village officials also said that Bertha is not the president of the EHVAA, as the association’s annual vote is due to be held next week.

“Teri Bertha and others unsuccessfully tried to have a coup d’etat of the ambulance association by holding a group meeting, off-site, against the bylaws and tried to oust the current leadership,” Village Administrator Marcos Baladron said on Tuesday. “The village has to accept all changes and new officers, and Mary Mott and Mary Ellen McGuire are the chiefs and are expecting to be reelected by the association’s active membership next Tuesday.”

By phone on Monday, Bertha said that the association feels it has been left with no other recourse than a lawsuit to fight back against the village following the convulsive takeover of the ambulance service.

“I’m very distressed that it has come to this,” she said on Monday. “This has been going on since May, and we’ve made overtures to work with them, to try to come to an agreement, but they’ve been unwilling to work with us at all.”

She said that the village and EHVVA chiefs have refused to recognize the vote of association members on the new officers.

The rift between the village and the EHVAA had been brewing for several months before the village’s first steps to seize control of the ambulances were realized. Larsen had raised concerns in the summer of 2022 about response times and the frequency with which the village ambulance corps had to call for mutual aid from other departments, and had proposed increasing the number of paid EMTs the village employed.

He’d also proposed policy changes — most notably, dropping the EVAA’s longtime requirement that drivers of ambulances also be certified EMTs, which the mayor said greatly limited their recruitment of volunteer drivers — which the association pushed back against.

Members of the association had hired an attorney last winter after the village used an upstate attorney to transfer — the association says illegally — the official certifications for the East Hampton Village Volunteer Ambulance from the EHVAA to the village, without any notification to the association.

Shortly after discovering that the village had transferred the ambulance service certifications — village officials say they should never have been issued to any entity other than the village government, which is responsible for providing ambulance services to its residents — the association was informed that the village intended to take over the ambulance operations outright.

“On March 8, 2023, Mayor Larsen informed the volunteers of the ambulance association that they could continue as a fraternal association and conduct parties and drives to raise money for the new emergency medical service department in the village,” a copy of the lawsuit the association plans to file if it is given permission by the court reads. “The letter to EHVAA, removing them from the building, intimated that there was consideration of a contract but the mayor never followed through, despite EHVAA’s repeated requests.”

In addition to the association checking account, Bertha said in her petition that the association had also paid for the construction of a commercial kitchen in the ambulance headquarters for the benefit of volunteers and purchased medical supplies.

The village formed the EMS Department in March, and named the association’s most recently elected president and vice president, Mary Mott and Mary Ellen McGuire, as the chief and assistant chief of the department. After initially proposing those positions would be appointed by the Village Board going forward, board members backed down and agreed to let the association elect the chiefs — though the Village Board would still have to vote to install any new officers.

Some two dozen volunteers have quit the village ambulance since the creation of the department. The mayor has said that the expanded use of paid EMTs and a volunteer recruitment drive have filled the ranks sufficiently — Larsen is now an ambulance driver himself — and that response times are getting shorter and the need for mutual aid calls fewer.

Baladron said that those members are presumably among those who participated in the renegade election and that the village will not recognize that vote as valid.

He said the claim of the association funding being improperly taken by the village is also untrue.

“That money was given to benefit the ambulance members that serve the village — not anybody’s personal interests,” he said. “They have turned on the village.”