Freena challenges officials on political inaction over EMS pay
Andrew Freena, a former EMT and current PA, says the FDNY chief says life-threatening jobs are not held, but paramedics across all boroughs arrive under 10 minutes only 26% of the time. He says pay parity would cost a small fraction of the city budget and asks why the issue remains unsolved.
Good afternoon.
My name is Andrew Freena.
I'm a former EMT, current PA.
Not to beat a dead horse about the response times, you've heard a lot of harrowing metrics, but the FDNY commissioner, or not the commissioner, the chief, I think he said something correct that they don't hold life-threatening jobs.
But if you look at the statistics,
The percentage of time across all five boroughs where the paramedics arrive under 10 minutes is 26% as of the last month, which is pretty awful.
So you must be holding jobs.
Regardless, it's nice to hear this discussion here, how everyone's recognizing that the pay is the problem and that it needs to be solved.
But it just it confuses me why the issue is not solved.
I see it as relatively simple, right?
This really isn't a partisan issue, a political issue.
Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, a socialist, whatever, if we live in the city and our families live here, we want the ambulance to show up fast.
I think it's what, like two, three, maybe $400 million to achieve parity.
Yes, that's a lot of money, but out of $112 billion budget, it's not that much.
When you see that other agencies receive federal funds or state funds, that's another alternative.
So
plus the insurance billing.
There's a lot of solutions here.
And it makes me start to wonder, you know, I don't mean to say this offensively, but like, do you have your own private ambulance services or do you not live in the city?
Because aren't you worried about yourselves?
Like, I just feel like that's, you know, this is also an issue that you can be a little selfish about.
But it frustrates me as someone who's not a politician, not a union leader.
Like, what do I do?
I call my office.
I live in Long Island City.
Thankfully, I wasn't on the ground, you know, with a compound fracture, but they don't care.
Julie Wan doesn't care, right?
We call these politicians and they don't want to do much.
And there's a lot of trying to blame the fire department.
And then they try to blame you guys.
And people just keep pointing the finger.
So it becomes very frustrating as a constituent.
And I just hope we can actually, you know, we're talking about it.
That's great.
But I hope we come to a solution now.
Thank you.