Ambulance Corps’ Wheels Are Grinding, Not Greased
By David Gonzalez



James Robinson, co-founder of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps, said that bureaucratic requirements have delayed buying a badly needed new trailer. (Photos: David Gonzalez/The New York Times)
The big trailer on Marcus Garvey Boulevard doesn’t look so much beat up as beat down — shuttered windows, a gated door and a body that sags, creaks and flakes. The big letters touting “C.P.R.” on the side seem more like a plea for help than an announcement of first aid classes.

For 19 years this has been the operations center of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps, the nation’s first such minority-run outfit. The group responds to emergency calls within minutes, and has trained thousands of people in first aid and paramedic skills. Since October, the trailer became too dangerous to occupy, so James Robinson moved the phones, computers and radios to a room inside his house a block away.“Man, we had a rough winter,” said Mr. Robinson, a former Fire Department emergency medical technician and co-founder of the corps, who is known as Rocky. “The trailer was dangerous. It was cold. It was sinking and the floor had holes in it. The roof had holes in it!”
Yet as rough as that was, the corps kept responding to emergency calls without fail. Now, if only the city’s bureaucracy could cut its response time as impressively.
Turns out that almost two years ago the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, gave the corps $135,000 to buy a new trailer. But while the money has been set aside, the trailer has yet to be bought, since the corps and its friends have been dealing with an ever-shifting set of rules and regulations from a veritable alphabet soup of city agencies.
Tamsin Wolf, a lawyer and longtime supporter/fund-raiser/guardian angel of the corps, recounts the saga in a manner that sounds like Kathy Griffin channeling Martin Scorsese (minus the swearing). The short version:
Corps gets grant from Mr. Markowitz. Corps realizes it is — like many such grants — available as a reimbursement, which means it has to buy the trailer itself, then submit receipts for payment. Corps gets Fire Department to administer grant. City decides to shift it to the Department of Design and Construction. The agency in charge of the city lot on which the trailer rests seeks a higher rent, then later says it cannot offer a long-term lease.
Ms. Wolf manages to roll with all the changes.
“I have only a very small store of worry,” she said. “Worrying is like paying interest on a debt that might never come due. I am thoughtful.”
So far, no trailer.
When the corps decided a bathroom inside the trailer would be nice, a whole new world of permits and plans opened up. Then, Ms. Wolf said the Department of Buildings kept on insisting any new trailer would be considered a permanent structure.
“Bear in mind, the other agencies were adamant that it not be a permanent structure,” she said. “Hey, it has wheels and you can just roll that bad boy away. No, the Buildings Department was not of that persuasion. They said we had to meet code. You know what that is like? Oh, Lord, take me out and shoot me!”
This month, an agreement was reached with more or less all the agencies involved. A spokesman for Mr. Markowitz said the city’s comptroller is waiting for the Department of Buildings to sign off, and then it will release the funds.
For reimbursement.
Of course, if the corps had that kind of money sitting around in its checking account, this would not be a problem. But it does not. On Wednesday, however, the Independence Community Foundation stepped up and told the corps it would be willing to essentially lend the corps the money while waiting for reimbursement.
Marilyn Gelber, the foundation’s executive director and a former commissioner of the city¹s Department of Environmental Protection, said she could not resist helping Rocky and the corps.
“They have always gone from one battle to the next, but there’s nobody like Rocky,” she said. “Being a recovering public servant, I can understand what they are going through. In my new life at the foundation, I can cut through this stuff. We are going to advance them the money, and I will try to be helpful with the permits, too.”
Rocky and Ms. Wolf are hoping the trailer will be ready in time for the corps’s 20th anniversary in July.
“I am committed to seeing this trailer installed before my death,” Ms. Wolf said. “The city is just Byzantine!”
While lawyers and bureaucrats were busy burying each other in paperwork, Rocky found himself dealing with yet more problems close to home. A few doors down from his home, to be exact. Ever since he shifted operations to a small room in the front of his house on Lexington Avenue, a neighbor who has relied more on dialing 311 than 911 complained that Rocky was running an illegal business in his home.
While that complaint was eventually dismissed, another neighbor has groused that the corps illegally built a classroom at the end of a series of narrow shed on the lot. The room, which has a big television screen, dummies and emergency medical gear, is used to train people in first aid and emergency response.
“The city says this is an illegal structure,” Rocky said. “Well, until we get our trailer, they’ll just have to give me ticket after ticket.”