The New Paltz Rescue Squad responds to more than 2,500 calls a year, working to keep the area safe. But even the mix of paid crew and volunteers weren’t immune from the economic effects of the pandemic.

Matthew Goodnow, CEO of the Rescue Squad, says keeping the ambulance corps running during the thick of COVID-19 was nearly impossible. It required planning, people and money.

“We had to dip into our reserves and deplete them heavily," Goodnow said. "Every payroll, I was working diligently to make sure we were going to make it.”


What You Need To Know

  • Ulster County's ARPA committee is distributing $1.5 million in funds to 50 county non-profits

  • One of those is New Paltz Rescue Squad, an ambulance corps that received nearly $50,000

  • Other non-profits to receive funding include the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, Beyond the 4 Walls Outreach program and Marlboro Library

But help is on the way as Ulster County awarded $50,000 to the Rescue Squad. That money came from the Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, which passed Congress last year. The federal ARPA dollars have gone toward assisting communities throughout New York affected by the pandemic. The state received nearly $13 billion in federal aid.

Some of the counties that received the funds included Ulster, which got $34 million; Albany County, which received $58 million; Onondaga County, which received $89 million; and Erie County, which received $52 million.

Ulster decided to use part of that funding, about $1.5 million, to assist 50 non-profits in the county recovering from the pandemic.

Peter Criswell, an Ulster legislator and chair of the ARPA Committee, says that these funds will help a lot of different parts of the county community.

“It’s such a wide variety of needs, whether it’s educational needs or it’s health needs or it’s social needs," Criswell said. "Many of those nonprofits really suffered through the pandemic, so we want to have some kind of mechanism to help them.”

These funds are critical for non-profits like the Rescue Squad.

“The extra money to put into the payroll account will help us focus again on some of things we had to put to the side like replacing equipment, upgrading equipment, because we were so focused on PPE and keeping people on the road," Goodnow said.

Even though ambulance corps aren’t considered essential under state law, they are essential to ensuring that a community is safe.

“Time is tissue," Goodnow said. "Whether it’s brain tissue or heart tissue, the longer it takes for help to get there, the more damage that can be done.”