Mostly optimistic talk about Batavia's financial upswing at tonight's council meeting took on some shades of gray when the topic turned to the fate of the city's ambulance corps.
City Manager Jason Molino warned council that "we have to get a financially stable point" before the city looks forward to reacquiring services that have been cut down to keep a sinking ship from going under altogether.
"We talked about a surplus," he said, "but when you look at the cash perspective, there is no surplus. ... We're going to have to take another month to look at this [amublance service] and decide if you want to continue to supply this service or not. It's extremely expensive, and we cannot maintain it."
Little specifics were given—we will fill in more details tomorrow—but it was understood that the council would get together sometime in the coming weeks to consider whether to continue paying for its ambulance service.
Council President Charlie Mallow said that the city received a letter from the fire and ambulance union about the poor state of its emergency vehicles. We will get that letter.
"The ambulances are in disrepair," said Mallow. "There has been a lot of pressure to abandon this."
