Friends and Neighbors,
After much good news reported in previous days, unfortunately we comes to you to report some not so good news. As many of you know, CVRS has been providing Volunteer Emergency Medical Services to the Supply and Holden Beach area since 1976. We have also served parts of the Shallotte, Bolivia and other areas as well. In addition to Emergency response, we also provide ambulance service to Lower Cape Fear Hospice, West Brunswick High School Football Games and hospital transports to Duke, Chapel Hill, NHRMC etc. Unlike Fire Departments CVRS provides critical service at very minimal expense to Brunswick County Tax payers. Funding from Brunswick County has been $36,000 annually. The majority of the 36k goes directly toward Auto and Liability Insurance expense. Remaining funding is raised through non agressive Insurance Billing for Ambulance Transport, and Fundraisers conducted by volunteers (BBQ cookouts, raffles, etc.) Last year volunteers answered over 1000 calls for service. We were dispatched for many more thousand calls. Obviously we cannot answer every single call as we are the largest Squad district in Brunswick County...we simply do not have that many personnel (100 volunteers could barely handle that kind of call volume). Many of our neighboring Fire Departments respond to way less calls than we do, with Full Time staffing, and their funding ranges from several hundreds of thousands to over a million dollars. There is no comparison to CVRS and the FD’s, as what we achieve at CVRS is with very little money. Some may ask how have we survived...We credit our accomplished survival to having very dedicated volunteers, and by the frugal use of our funds. We shop at the Habitat for Humanity and the local Hope Chest for many of our station/householdand and purchase other necessities at local thrifts and discount stores and we have done this for YEARS. We dont live above our means. Two of our last three ambulance acquisitions were from a citizen who donated two used ambulances (we were so excited and grateful...kind of like a kid in a candy store because we SAVED our community $300,000). As you can see, we have worked very hard to be respected good stewards of hard earned money. We do what we do just to help our community in their time of need and we ask for very little in return. Just ask some of the patients we have helped in the community. With all of this said, yesterday, via rumor, we learned that our Brunswick County Franchise Agreement would be terminated effective September 2019. We were able to search the Brunswick County Government website where we found the attached “Draft” letter from the new ES Director Mr. Edward Conroe. Immediately, we reached out to Commissioners Marty Cooke, Frank Williams, Pat Sykes, Randy Thompson, County Manager Ann Hardy, EMS Director Lyle Johnson and ES Director Edward Conroe. The first official to return our call was Mr. Randy Thompson who indicated that we should proceed to explore the matter further and he seem to agree we were providing an important service. Mr. Thompson specifically stated the recommendation to terminate the CVRS Franchise originated from “EMS Staff” and possibly from “Lyle Johnston”. The second person to return our call was Edward Conroe, who was very cold and stated “the Commissioners unanimously agreed to EMS Staffs recommendation to terminate the CVRS and Leland FD EMS Franchise”. What really stands out is that after being a County partner for over 40 years we received NO thank you or even an offer to meet in person to discuss why this handled in the matter it was. Finally, tonight after 8PM we received an email from Anny Hardy who offered us an opportunity to speak at a Commissioner Budget Meeting and again with NO thank yous or appreciation. At this time we believe it is in our best interest to bring this matter to the attention of our citizens and seek their input and support. We realize not everyone will support us for what ever the reasons may be, but we hope that those we have helped in some small way might rally for us so that we may continue serving the community we love so much. Obviously, we are NOT trying to pick a fight with our Commissioners or EMS Administration, but have them realize we are needed by our Community and its costing VERY LITTLE to tax payers. Please consider helping us. We want to continue serving you to the best of our ability. All of our members being Christian feel that our prayers for help will not go unheard.
Respectfully,
Coastline Volunteer Rescue Squad