Ski art
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Fundraiser supports kids programs at Cochran’s
Storyteller helps others record their stories
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January 27, 2022
Weekly news coverage for Charlotte and Hinesburg
thecitizenvt.com
Family Health Center will move to Williston
Who’s board?
Doctors pulled out of Charlotte last summer SCOOTER MACMILLAN STAFF WRITER
COURTESY PHOTO
Students from the fall wooden cutting board class at Access CVU. Turn to page 3 for more information.
Dreams of the Charlotte Family Health Center locating in Charlotte are not only merely dead, but they are really most sincerely dead. After a years-long, and at times contentious, effort to build a medical facility in Charlotte, the medical practice is leaving its temporary space in Shelburne and consolidating with its other medical partners in Williston. “We looked for every opportunity to stay in the Shelburne/ Charlotte area to remain convenient for our many local patients, but the ability to maintain a small independently owned office in Vermont’s health care environment is challenging,” Dr. Andrea Regan said. Charlotte Family Health Center joined Evergreen Family Health
Partners in 2017. Maintaining small independent offices has become difficult for other partners in their practice, Dr. Paul Reiss said. The Charlotte practice is one of three being consolidated into one office because of the pandemic and other factors in the current state of health care. Reiss said the major difficulty is the duplication of so many things in the different medical practices including labs, reception areas, waiting rooms, IT systems, phone systems and medical practice certifications. “You have to have duplicates, maintain it and pay licensing,” Reiss said. The Charlotte Family Health Center will become known as the Evergreen Family Health Group See HEALTH CENTER on page 11
Charlotte fire and rescue contends with drop in volunteers, staff SCOOTER MACMILLAN STAFF WRITER
Attracting and hanging onto fire and rescue employees and volunteers is tough all over, but it’s been particularly hard in Charlotte. It’s been so hard to staff the rescue side of the Charlotte Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department that it has transitioned to a primarily paid staff with a small contingent of six volunteers or attendants who may go on ambulance calls as drivers or to perform mostly non-medical duties. Critics of the department say it has had problems keeping staff and volunteers because of dissatisfaction with management, particularly Chief Dick St. George. But supporters say the department is
just struggling with the same problems of retaining people as other departments. Fritz Tegatz, president of the board of Charlotte Fire and Rescue Department, said he wouldn’t discuss complaints about individual members because of privacy concerns and because he didn’t want “to get into a pissing match.” The number of Charlotte rescue’s volunteer attendants has dropped to six from 14 in 2017, but the department has experienced that up-and-down trend for at least the last nine years. For three of those years, it had at least 13 volunteers but other years the number of volunteers hovered around five. The Charlotte fire department has 13 volunteers, which is
the same amount it had last year. In 2014 the department had 23 members, but the number dropped to 13 by 2015. It was up to 26 members in 2016. Over the last nine years, it’s averaged just over 18 members. Tegatz said there were several volunteers who quit eight or 10 years ago because of public criticism at that time which he characterized as “claims and lies.” “They still say, ‘You know, I’d still volunteer, but I’m just not going to put myself out there. It affected my job,” Tegatz said. “Who wants to put up with this crap as a volunteer?” The Charlotte Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department has made a switch in recent years so that the fire department is now all volun-
teer, and the rescue department is almost all paid. According to the department’s website, there are currently 16 volunteer members of the fire department. The rescue department is run by four salaried employees. Two of them are on duty seven days a week, 24 hours a day. It takes three people for an ambulance on a call. The two people in the back with a patient are either full-time staff or per diem employees. Sometimes the driver is a volunteer who may only be qualified to drive. Holes in the rescue schedule are filled with the per-diem staff. These are emergency medical certified technicians who are paid for working a 12-hour shift on an as-needed basis.
“Many of them are full-time employees with other services or they’re students who are working. A lot of them are med students,” Tegatz said. Part of the increase in the department’s proposed $900,000 budget is to convert two per-diem employees to full-time salaried staff to help with the full-time day and night operation of the department. Most of this budget increase is not due to pay, he said, but to add benefits for these two employees, who will probably come from the department’s pool of 30 per-diem employees. Last year’s fire and rescue budget was just over $780,000. Selectboard chair Jim FaulkSee FIRE AND RESCUE on page 3