VOORHEESVILLE — With Voorheesville Area Ambulance Service seeking to merge with Delmar-Bethlehem EMS or face dissolving the agency, a question still remains on what will happen to the building where the agency was formerly headquartered.

The service shut down in October because it lacked volunteers — membership had dwindled to a half dozen or so — and the county took over with paid staff.

Currently, Albany County’s Emergency Medical Service stations paid employees rather than volunteers at the building on Voorheesville Avenue in the village.

However, VAAS First Lieutenant Thom Smith told The Enterprise that the building is still owned by VAAS and contains its equipment and vehicles; it is also where the remaining VAAS volunteers respond from as a secondary crew for the county.

“We are responding,” he said. “We are working with the sheriff’s office very closely.”

Smith and Captain Kate Odell attended the village board of trustees meeting on Nov. 22 to speak about the odds facing the near-defunct ambulance service.

Currently, VAAS members have two options: either merge with Delmar-Bethlehem EMS or dissolve their agency. Smith said at the meeting that Delmar-Bethlehem proved to be the best choice of agency to join with.

“If we were to substitute Western Turnpike for Delmar or some other agency, it wouldn’t work,” he said at the meeting, “because we work well together.”

“They’re not here to expand their territory,” he later told The Enterprise of Delmar-Bethlehem. “They’re in this to help their neighbor.”

Smith explained that a written agreement is in place for the two agencies to merge, and asked on behalf of VAAS for the town and village to agree on the merger.

Albany County EMS will remain the primary service in Voorheesville and parts of New Scotland for next year, said New Scotland Supervisor Douglas LaGrange.

“For 2017, the sheriff and his program will be the number-one response, it will be the regular response,” LaGrange told The Enterprise; he added that there is a contract set up for the sheriff’s office to provide EMS coverage for the town through 2017. Conway told The Enterprise that this contract also applied to the village.

LaGrange said the best option for the town would be for VAAS to merge with Delmar-Bethlehem EMS.

“It’s very hard to tell what ‘most likely’ will be,” he added.

Conway told The Enterprise on Tuesday that he felt that the merger would be the best option for the village as well.

“It’s the best-case scenario,” he said.

LaGrange said that, no matter whether the former VAAS members were working with Delmar-Bethlehem EMS or with Albany County as they are currently, it would be beneficial to have a team of volunteers serving the town.

LaGrange also said he was told by representatives of Delmar-Bethlehem EMS that, were VAAS to merge with the agency, there would be no cost to the town or village. This is in part because Delmar-Bethlehem EMS raises money by using revenue recovery, in which the agency accepts payments from patients’ health-insurance companies. The agency also works as a secondary EMS service, with Albany County serving the community during the day and volunteers serving at night. VAAS also used revenue recovery and acted as a secondary service to Albany County.

“The cost would more than likely increase to the sheriff,” said Conway, because of the increase in hours; he added that this cost would be covered by taxpayers’ money.

What happens to the ambulance building?

VAAS’s headquarters at 21 Voorheesville Ave., in the center of the village alongside the village hall, also face a number of options.

One option, said Smith, would be to transfer the building to the town and village, with the town bearing 61 percent and the village 39 percent — the same split that was used when both municipalities supported VAAS.

“That is the desired solution,” said Smith.

Another option would be to draft an agreement alongside the merger pact allowing VAAS to keep the building as a station for the merged agencies. If the merger did not go through, it would be returned to the town and village.

The advantage of this option, said Smith, would be that it “gives everybody what they would like to see in this.”

The third and final option would be to dissolve the agency.

“Everybody loses in this,” said Smith, adding that he would stay out of the process if this were the case, but in the meantime he and Odell would still be stepping out of the process as lawyers for VAAS, Delmar-Bethlehem EMS, and the town and village look to reach an agreement.

Mayor Conway said at the meeting that he had impressed upon town and village lawyers that “time was of the essence.”

Speaking to The Enterprise on Monday, Smith said that the town and village were “concerned with assets leaving the town,” meaning the use of the building, VAAS’s ambulance, and other supplies as well as manpower for staffing a volunteer ambulance service.

Smith said that, if the building were ceded to the town and village, it would be likely that they would use it for Albany County EMS members and a volunteer crew from a newly merged Delmar-Bethlehem EMS. Smith also said that, even if the building were solely owned by Delmar-Bethlehem EMS, Albany County EMS would still remain stationed there.

Conway told The Enterprise on Tuesday that Albany County’s EMS would increase its hours in the case of a merger between VAAS and Delmar-Bethlehem EMS, because — unlike the situation between Delmar-Bethlehem EMS and the county in which volunteers cover a night shift — the county would have at least one EMT stationed on nights and weekends as well as during the day.

It would likely be arranged to always station a county emergency medical technician at the building, with a volunteer crew being stationed for some shifts and another EMT from the county being stationed for other shifts, according to Smith.

Smith even spoke of possibly expanding the building in the future to fit both agencies and their ambulances.

LaGrange told The Enterprise on Tuesday that, if ownership of the building were to pass to the village and town, it has already been arranged to have Albany County’s EMS stationed there.

“If we own the building, then we’ll enter a lease to the sheriff,” he said. “It’s already been agreed upon on our end.”

He added that there is no contractual agreement, as the town owned no portion of the building. LaGrange also said he would be open to stationing volunteers from a newly merged Delmar-Bethlehem EMS at 21 Voorheesville Ave.

The town and the sheriff’s office had spoken of as little as a dollar-a-year lease to the EMS squad, LaGrange said, adding that an arrangement would save the taxpayers money and that the county could even make improvements on the building or add an addition.

Smith said that, if VAAS were to dissolve, it would be likely that another not-for-profit organization, like a Boy Scout troop, would take the building and the ambulance would be sent to another agency in need of it.

According to LaGrange, a dissolution of VAAS could prove to be more complicated and costly to go through than a merger, but he said the town would make attempts to keep the building for Albany County EMS to use.

“We haven’t looked into it because that’s the last thing everyone wants,” LaGrange said. “We’re hoping that it certainly doesn’t need to happen.”

Conway said that, in the case of dissolution, a judge would determine the fate of VAAS’s assets such as the building. The building would have to go to a “like-entity” of the agency.

“I think the sheriff’s office would qualify under that,” said Conway.

Were this not the case, and the building was given to another agency, “I think we could make do at the Voorheesville Firehouse,” added Conway. “But that is pretty unlikely,” he said of the possibility that the building wouldn’t go the the county.