Just who actually paid for Community Day?

A Community Day crowd swarms a Medflight helicopter at the 2012 Community Day. (Lebanon Voice file photo)

 A lot of folks enjoy Lebanon’s Community Day every May. It is a fun time for many young Lebanon families, especially those who can’t afford to take their kids to a theme park or perhaps even a local arcade.

The Rescue Department Corporation, known officially as Lebanon Rescue Squad, Inc., is a longtime benefactor of this event and proudly touted its sponsorship each year a couple of weeks before town elections (ahem).

As outgoing Selectman and Rescue Department Assistant Chief Jason Cole once said, it’s all about the kids.

Unfortunately, however, it’s not all about the kids.

Two weeks ago, accountants, the town treasurer and others revealed that the Lebanon Rescue Department was more than $200,000 in the red. That means the town is on the hook for that money.

That means taxes in Lebanon will probably be going up again.

Now, the remaining selectmen will be looking at any and all options in the coming months to lessen the tax impact. They do have some tools at their disposal to do just that. And surely much of those receivables will come in and some moneys recovered.

But how did the Lebanon Rescue Department, and its private nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation, get to this point?

Comstar, Lebanon Rescue Department’s billing service, gave us an inkling in a letter sent to selectmen this week and discussed at a special meeting on Thursday night.

Among the findings Comstar brought to the table regarding the Rescue Department were reports of shoddy and slipshod billing practices, late filing of Medicare forms necessary to ensure prompt payment, inefficiencies in paper billing and submitting of ambulance run reports, even reports of charging a third of the going rate for ambulance service. The list goes on and on.

So when taxes have gone up in recent years, the Rescue Department must shoulder some of the blame. The department, approved by Lebanon voters on the premise it would be self-funded, has been anything but. The town and taxpayers have been shouldering much of its cost for years.

When taxpayers shoulder the cost, taxes go up. When taxes go up, there’s usually a group of people, usually those who are elderly and on fixed incomes, who run the risk of losing their homes.

Renters also bear much of the burden. When taxes go up, landlords can’t be expected to take the entire hit. They normally pass some of that burden on to tenants, who see an increase in their monthly rental expense.

Now that the Rescue Department is under new leadership, the current Lebanon Rescue Squad, Inc. nonprofit corporation should be dissolved and whatever assets it might have returned to the town as it tries mightily to climb out of this fiscal hole.

The banking records of the corporation should also be opened to the town and citizens to see where the corporation’s money was spent over the years. (Hopefully, the record keeping is tidier than Comstar found with the department.)

A corporation must set forth a list of its official purposes when it is created. If the Lebanon Rescue Squad, Inc.’s purposes were to benefit the Lebanon Rescue Department, then it would stand to reason that those funds would’ve all been spent to that endeavor. We don’t doubt that they were, of course, but like the old Russian proverb goes: “Trust, but verify.”

As far as Community Day, whether or not it continues, only time will tell. Maybe the Lebanon Rescue Squad, Inc. will continue to pay for it. Maybe the town will. In fact, maybe the town and its taxpayers have been paying for it longer than they think.

If it continues, we would just make one suggestion. If it’s being run by a selectman, could we please just schedule it a couple of weeks after town elections.

- HT