By Adam Swift
Winthrop is working with its neighboring communities to look at ways to improve emergency response times for ambulances. Town Manager Tony Marino said those efforts are in part a response to a recent incident where ambulances could not respond to a call for a toddler in distress in a timely manner and the toddler was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital by Fire Chief Scott Wiley. “We had that tragic ambulance call, and one of the things that came out of that is that we are looking at ambulance coverage, not only here, but for a lot of the mutual aid calls for ambulances going out of town, which definitely takes the ambulance away from us,” said Marino. “We are looking at a company that does mapping; they started off doing it just for fire stations looking to see where the best fire station location is geographically. That same software can be used for ambulance coverage.” Marino said the town is reaching out to officials in Revere and Chelsea to look at where calls are coming in from across the region, map out the data, and see how they can work together to improve response times. “Obviously, there will be a cost with that, but I’ve got a meeting Friday with the mayor of Revere and the city manager for Chelsea, and we are going to talk to them and propose it to see what they think,” said Marino. “Maybe we can do a group effort and try to defer some of the cost.” In other business, Marino said the town is moving forward with the possibility of putting a Community Preservation Act question on the election ballot in November. The Community Preservation Act is a smart growth tool that helps communities preserve open space and historic spaces, create affordable housing, and develop outdoor recreational facilities. The CPA also allows communities to create a local community preservation fund with money that is raised through the imposition of a surcharge of not more than 3 percent on property taxes. Marino said most communities recently have gone with a surcharge of one to one-and-a-half percent. He added that there is an exemption on the first $100,000 of a homeowner’s property value.