Alna selectmen got a surprise Dec. 16. Wiscasset Ambulance Service sent a letter about some bad debts that Alna residents had racked up with the Wiscasset department. Board members said they had no intention of calling a special town meeting to ask for the money; and they wondered if it was a mistake.

“I don’t want to get in a (contest) if this is just a misunderstanding,” Third Selectman Doug Baston said.

The letter wasn’t a bill, it was information, about the debts and the fact that Wiscasset will no longer be shouldering other towns’ debts, Town Manager Marian Anderson said Friday.

“We wanted to bring to their attention their outstanding accounts (and) start the conversation.”

Alna, Edgecomb and Westport Island have long used Wiscasset Ambulance Service, and several years ago, at Wiscasset’s request, the towns started contributing a few thousand dollars a year.

The money would help offset Wiscasset’s costs to absorb those bad debts, Wiscasset officials said at the time. But Wiscasset should not, and legally cannot, be shouldering those debts at all, Anderson said.

It doesn’t have the authority to; each town is responsible for its residents’ bad debts, not Wiscasset for all of them, she said.

“That is not the responsibility of Wiscasset taxpayers. We were providing a service and going in the hole and we can’t do that. We want to be fiscally responsible. Outstanding accounts ... will have to be budgeted in the future at their town meetings,” Anderson said.

“We’re providing a service for a modest mount of money.  We need to reach out to our communities to say all bad debt has to be paid by municipalities at their individual town meetings. This (letter) is just the beginning of those conversations,” she said in Friday’s interview.

Alna residents’ bad debts from July 2013 to May 2015 totaled $2,832.08, according to the letter Wiscasset Ambulance Service billing coordinator Tanya Bailey signed. It reads in part: “Going forward into the future we are unable to write off any debt from other towns. Thank you for understanding and working with us to clear up this matter.”

Anderson said Maine Yankee’s still being open when Wiscasset Ambulance Service started may explain why Wiscasset hadn’t pursued debts with the towns.

“We’re in different times now,” she said.

Taking up the letter with fellow board members, First Selectman David Abbott said he thought the debts belonged to the people who had used the service. “To me, it’s not the town’s obligation. It’s up to the individual,” he said at the Dec. 16 meeting.

In a telephone interview Friday night, Abbott said he had spoken with Anderson and was satisfied with her explanation of the letter.

“I wouldn’t be hesitant at all about asking for more on the warrant,” for the annual town meeting in March, Abbott said.

“It’s a valuable service and it’s not a money-maker for them.”

While talking over the letter Dec. 16,  selectmen briefly questioned the ambulance service’s availability. They discussed possibly asking Central Lincoln County Ambulance if it would consider adding the town, and for how much.

Wiscasset Ambulance Service has faced some challenges this year, Anderson said Friday. At one point, service was down to one ambulance while the other was out for repair, she said. In addition, keeping the number of volunteers up has been a challenge, as it has been for volunteer services in Alna and other towns, Anderson noted.

Alna’s First Responders program ended in February for lack of volunteers.

“Maybe we can’t be 100-percent volunteer anymore,” Anderson said about the ambulance service. In one recent change, the town has been working to keep a two-person crew available, with the pay based on service level.

Bath responded to help Wiscasset seven times in three months, which was a marked improvement, Anderson said.

Abbott doesn’t expect the Alna board to pursue a change to Central Lincoln County Ambulance; however, the board may still seek information from the agency, including whether its service would even be an option for Alna, he said.

He hasn’t been getting complaints from residents about the Wiscasset service, he said.