New Providence EMS Opposes S1421: ‘A Costly State Mandate Threatening Local Volunteers and Taxpayers’

Editor’s Note: The following is a letter received from Sandy Davies, President, and Alexander JB Pereira, Chief, of New Providence EMS in opposition to S1421. A link to the original letter follows. At the end of this article is a button, we inserted, that will fire an email auto populating the address and subject line to representatives.

To: All Squad Members and the New Providence Community
From: President Sandy Davies #775, Chief Alexander Pereira #769
Date: May 17, 2026
Re: Senate Bill 1421/Assembly Bill 1008 – A Call to Action for New Providence

Squad Members and Neighbors,

Tomorrow, Monday, May 18, the New Jersey State Senate’s Law and Public Safety Committee will hold a hearing on S1421, a bill that on its surface seems like a net positive. This bill would mandate that each town in New Jersey provide basic life support (BLS) ambulance coverage in their towns, just as they are required to do for law enforcement and fire protection.

Senate Bill 1421, identical to Assembly Bill 1008, sounds great, but in reality it would be disastrous for our community and those around us. The bill would mandate that each and every town contract with an ambulance service to provide BLS care to their residents. However, because we are volunteers and not affiliated with the state, New Providence EMS would be ineligible to fulfill this unprecedented, unfunded state mandate. The same is true for Berkeley Heights EMS, Summit EMS, and Chatham EMS.

Despite having strong coverage from locally staffed, 100% volunteer agencies, New Providence and our neighboring towns would be forced to give hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars to paid EMS agencies for a contract that would never be fulfilled. The result will be wait times of 30 minutes or more for an ambulance, and a price tag of $1,000 or more on average per trip.

This absurd overreach from Trenton puts a mess of red tape in between neighbors helping neighbors, which has been our guiding principle for the last 74 years since our squad was founded in 1952. Whenever New Providence EMS helps a neighbor in need, we send a get-well-soon card, not a bill. Trenton is trying to legislate our volunteer squads out of existence under the rosy guise of “essential services” in favor of for-profit regional agencies.

In reality, if S1421 is signed into law, NP EMS will be forced into the bureaucratic state regulatory scheme originally meant to keep for-profit EMS agencies in check. This will cut the amount of time our locally staffed, free-to-the-patient rescue squad is able to get an ambulance out on the road in half, at best. As of today, NP EMS is covering on average 132 hours per week with local volunteer crews, leaving only 36 hours per week that Union County EMS has to take calls in town. NP EMS has been going against the regional trend since the Covid-19 Pandemic, covering more and more shifts every year, and we are on our way to being back to 24/7/365 local, all-volunteer coverage in the next few years. This bill eliminates all of that progress.

S1421 is wrong for New Providence and wrong for New Jersey. It is well intentioned, trying to address the issue of a handful of towns across the state who are negligent and not currently providing for their residents, but if signed into law in its current form it would leave towns like New Providence, Summit, Berkeley Heights, and Chatham high and dry and infinitely worse off than we are now. Your taxes will go up, and so will the time it takes for an ambulance to get to your door in your time of need.

This is a critical moment for our local communities. For the last 74 years, New Providence EMS has held firm in its commitment to our local community and always answered the call. Now we must ask you to help us be able to keep answering the call.

We are asking the community to please call and email the members of the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee to tell them to vote NO on S1421 and help keep NP EMS working for New Providence.

Yours in Service to New Providence,

Sandy Davies
President #775

Alexander JB Pereira
Chief #769

Senate Law and Public Safety Committee
Senator Linda Greenstein, Chairwoman: 609-395-9911 | [email protected]
Senator Paul Moriarty, Vice-Chair: 856-232-6700 | [email protected]
Senator Owen Henry: 732-607-7580 | [email protected]
Senator Angela McKnight: 201-360-2502 | [email protected]
Senator Declan O’Scanlon, Jr.: 732-444-1838 | [email protected]

Submitted directly by the authors; content reflects their own views.

Click the button below to send an email to all representatives listed above.

Source