But the city’s point person on CMED said it’s all about bringing CMED into the 21st century, and that no decision has been made to farm out services to a private company.

Meanwhile, the CMED director abruptly resigned this week, after telling union officials he didn’t want to be responsible for any safety issues related to having fewer dispatchers. Gary Stango’s resignation came after the CMED board voted last week to adopt a temporary budget that reduces the number of dispatchers from 15 to 9.

CMED South Central, a system in place since 1977, exists to connect emergency medical personnel to ambulance companies and area hospitals for an 18-town area stretching from Milford in the west to Madison in the east and Meriden in the north.

“Privatizing a vital government service, a core government function, where emergency responders’ lives and that of the public would be put at risk, to a private entity to save a small amount of money is ridiculous and can be deadly,” said Kevin Sheil, president of Community Workers of America Local 1103.

“Public safety shouldn’t be calculated solely as a bottom-line entry in a budget,” said Lori Pelletier, executive secretary treasurer of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, who attended a press conference the union held earlier in the week.

“Privatization leads to a loss of the public’s right to know and a loss of the public’s right to information,” said Kevin Scrobola, business representative for CWA Local 1103. “Private companies are not required to open their records or decision-making process to the public, and are usually not covered by open meeting laws or freedom of information acts.”

Union members and leaders believe New Haven, which voted along with West Haven and North Branford to withdraw from CMED, effective July 1, but which remains a member under a one-month agreement approved last week, is looking to award a contract for emergency dispatching to American Medical Response, a private ambulance company.

“Fifteen residents of the Greater New Haven area may be laid off in total due to this ill-conceived plan and irresponsible decision,” said Sheil. “These are real people. They are your neighbors, your friends, people who pay their bills on time, people who play by the rules and who send their children to the same schools that your children go to.”

They’re “real people who will now face financial uncertainty and possible ruin, all because of a scheme to privatize this critical service by contracting it out to a for-profit business,” he said.

But Rick Fontana, deputy director for operations of New Haven’s Office of Emergency Management, said no such decision has been made.

“This has nothing to do with privatization. This has everything to do with getting with the technology of the 21st century,” Fontana said.

“We have proposals from both” CMED and AMR and “we are actively reviewing both proposals,” he said. “We have a budget that’s in place that will get us through this month. We have a committee made up of five individuals and one mayor” that’s trying to chart a course for CMED to move forward.

“For them to say that we’re going to a private company, there’s no truth to that, whatsoever,” Fontana said.

He pointed out that “this is not one community. This is a group of communities that feels that CMED is far, far more expensive than any of the other, similar” regional dispatching organizations that serve other areas.

He said he was sorry to see Stango leave so abruptly, pointing out that the CMED board had funded his continued position going forward.

“It’s sad that he left his people high and dry like he did,” Fontana said.

The CMED board unanimously agreed on a one-month budget last week to extend scaled-back operations at least through the of July.

The CMED board also came up with a schedule for $185,000 in additional fees for the four communities (Bethany, Ansonia, Derby and Shelton) that require dispatching services beyond the three core services most communities want.

The non-core services include 9-1-1 service and fire and ambulance dispatching for Bethany, fire and ambulance dispatching for Derby and ambulance dispatching for Ansonia and Shelton.

With the clock ticking, it also tasked a new committee chaired by West Haven Mayor Ed O’Brien to come up with a more long-term plan to see if the regional dispatching cooperative can survive.

New Haven, West Haven, Hamden—which collectively account for 43.85 percent of CMED’s budget and believe they pay too much—and North Branford all have threatened to pull out, and the legislative bodies in New Haven, West Haven and North Branford have voted to do so.

The total $1.09 million budget approved last week represents a 33.2 percent decrease from the current year’s $1.64 million budget and will cut the number of CMED dispatchers from 15 to 9, while focusing on the three core services of medical “patching” to connect accident scenes to hospitals, mutual aid and mass casualty coordination.

The $886.236 town share of that budget represents a 32.1 percent decrease.