Mastic, Mastic Beach ambulance district commissioners eliminated

Commissioners with the Mastic Ambulance District say they were unaware the town eliminated their positions nearly a decade ago and have canceled next week’s election.

“We’ve gone under the assumption that we were commissioners and we are not,” said Mastic Ambulance District Commissioner Beth Wahl, the only one of three commissioners who was campaigning for a three-year re-election term set for a vote next Tuesday.

Brookhaven Town eliminated the positions of ambulance district commissioners — an advisory board tasked with helping the districts craft annual budgets — in 2007 by not including them in ambulance district contracts with the town.

“Any attempts to proceed with a commissioner’s election are unauthorized,” Senior Assistant Town Attorney Marie Michel wrote to Wahl in a Nov. 25 letter. “Be advised that you are without actual or implied authority to disseminate correspondence on ambulance district letterhead.”

The 2007 action left town board members as the de facto governing body charged with approving annual budgets presented by the districts.

“The whole thing is just strange. I’m just upset that the process wasn’t handled correctly,” Wahl said in a phone interview. “Somebody should have told us. It’s OK that they wanted to do away with it, but someone should let us know.”

But town officials say two districts that held commissioner elections after 2007 — Mastic and Mastic Beach — should have known better.

“The problem is with them. They are misinformed,” said Michel, who has been the town board’s liaison to the ambulance districts for 14 years. “They have no authority to be commissioners.”

The town’s ambulance districts are South County, East Moriches, Medford, Manorville, Mt. Sinai, Shirley, Patchogue, Mastic and Mastic Beach.

Of the nine districts, Michel said, Mastic and Mastic Beach are the only two that continued to elect commissioners, an unpaid position.

South Country Ambulance District chief and manager Gregory Miglino Jr. said his department received a letter in 2007 from the town confirming the abolishment of commissioners and that he also met with town board members at the time.

“They should have known,” Miglino said, referring to the Mastic and Mastic Beach districts. “The town came to the conclusion that commissioners weren’t in the best interest of the community.”

Mastic Beach Ambulance District held commissioner elections last year. Officials there weren’t available for comment.

Mastic Commissioner Francis Knight, 61, elected in 2008, said he and others meet with ambulance company officials roughly every two months to help create a budget. Knight said they sent minutes and election results to the town clerk’s office. And he said Councilman Dan Panico swore in commissioners at installation dinners.

Panico said he swore in the commissioners in recent years. “It was a gesture to honor their honorary status,” he said.

Wahl said the town should have told her that her position had been abolished.

“They did away with commissioners and didn’t tell anyone. We’ve been proceeding as we should have,” Wahl said. “It wasn’t communicated at all.”