Town of LaFayette voters will decide on Nov. 3 whether they support raising town taxes to put an ambulance crew on duty 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

The Onondaga County Board of Elections lists the question on its unofficial candidates list for the Nov. 3, 2026 general election, revised Aug. 5. The listing reads: “Do you support an additional increase in Town of LaFayette taxes to fund full-time staffing (24/7/365) of ambulance services within the Town of LaFayette Ambulance Department, Inc., with the additional taxation estimated to equal $332 per year for a home assessed at $200,000 and represent an increase in Town taxes of 15.7%?”

That is the only town proposition on LaFayette’s ballot. The county list shows Supervisor William D. McConnell Sr. running for reelection on the Republican and Conservative lines, with no other candidate listed for the seat. Michele Pirro Bailey appears for town councilor to fill a vacancy and Katherine R. Rienhardt for tax collector, both on the same two lines.

### What the mailer is, and what it is not

Most of what LaFayette residents know about the cost of this proposal comes from a four-page mailer hosted on the town’s website, townoflafayetteny.gov, under Public Notices and Announcements with the link text “Ambulance Referendum Mailer.”

The mailer is not a neutral analysis. It is the town’s own case for the service. It carries signed letters from Supervisor Bill McConnell and from David Hoxie, vice president of the LaFayette Ambulance Department, and its third page is a designed infographic that closes with the line “DELAYED CARE CAN BE DEADLY. SUPPORT LAFAYETTE AMBULANCE. SUPPORT A FASTER, SAFER RESPONSE FOR ALL.”

To be precise about what the document does and does not do: it contains no instruction to vote yes. Its reproduction of the ballot on page four shows the YES and NO boxes both empty. Hoxie’s letter urges residents “to not just look at this as another tax increase, but as a supplemental insurance policy” and states that “This funding WILL save lives!” That is advocacy for the service. It is not a printed ballot recommendation.

The mailer carries no “paid for by” line. Page four bears the return address of the Town of LaFayette, 2577 Route 11, P.O. Box 193, along with a Presorted Standard US Postage Paid indicia. CNY Signal has not established who paid for the printing and postage, and nothing in the document states it. That remains an open question.

### The numbers the town is using

Every figure in this section comes from the town’s mailer and is attributed to it.

The mailer says the town currently contracts with the LaFayette Ambulance Department for 100 hours of staffed ambulance coverage per week, out of 168 hours in a week. Two-person crews work 48 hours on and 48 hours off, covering 96 of those 100 hours. Part-time employees pick up the remainder. In the mailer’s own words, “There is NO coverage the rest of the week. So, no coverage on the Third Day of the Rotation.” Outside those hours, volunteers may respond, but the mailer says only two volunteer EMTs remain.

McConnell’s letter traces how the town got here. It says the fiscal year 2023 budget added funding for four paid EMT employees after the volunteer force aged out and weekly coverage had fallen to roughly 60 percent. It says the town has not stayed under the New York 2 percent tax cap in its last two budgets.

The infographic page lists four dollar figures:

– Proposed full-time contract: $431,338.00
– 2027 budget requirement: $583,039.00
– Projected revenue from claims reimbursement and other sources: $171,500.00
– Investing in our community: $1,185,877.00

On the tax side, the mailer says the current 2026 rate is $10.67 per thousand of assessed value and that, assuming no other changes to the budget, the 2027 rate would be $12.33 per thousand. That is an increase of $1.66 per thousand, the figure the mailer prints.

The mailer’s household table checks out arithmetically. At $1.66 per thousand, a home assessed at $100,000 pays $166 more a year, or about $13.83 a month. At $200,000 it is $332, about $27.67 a month. At $300,000, $498, about $41.50. At $400,000, $664, about $55.33. CNY Signal recalculated each line and each one is correct.

### Three things worth a closer look

**The $1,185,877 total is the sum of the three other figures.** Add the proposed full-time contract, the 2027 budget requirement and the projected revenue together: $431,338 plus $583,039 plus $171,500 equals exactly $1,185,877. That is not an approximation. It is the printed total to the dollar.

Two of those three components would normally not be added to each other. Projected revenue is money coming in, not a cost to taxpayers. And a proposed contract figure and a total budget requirement for the same service in the same year would ordinarily overlap rather than stack. The mailer does not explain how the $1,185,877 figure was derived or what period it covers. CNY Signal has not verified what the number is intended to represent, and the mailer offers no note or footnote on it.

**The mailer gives two different out-of-service response times.** Page three’s infographic reports the average response time when LaFayette Ambulance is not in service as 14 minutes 29 seconds. Hoxie’s letter on page two says “average mutual aid response times are 14 minutes 19 seconds!” The two figures are ten seconds apart in the same document. Both appear in the same mailer, and nothing in it reconciles them.

The in-service figure is consistent. McConnell’s letter puts LaFayette’s response “within 6 minutes and 30 seconds of notice IF THERE IS AN AMBULANCE EMT CREW IN SERVICE,” and the infographic prints 6 minutes 30 seconds.

**The stated 15.7 percent does not quite follow from the published rates.** Going from $10.67 to $12.33 per thousand is an increase of about 15.56 percent, which rounds to 15.6 percent. The ballot question and the mailer both say 15.7 percent. The gap is small and could easily come from unrounded underlying rates that the mailer does not print. CNY Signal could not verify the underlying figures.

### Advisory only

The mailer reproduces the town board resolution in full on page four, and the resolution is explicit about what this vote does. It authorizes “the submission of an advisory referendum to the qualified electors of the town regarding a possible tax increase.” It states that the board “takes no position through the adoption of this Resolution regarding whether a tax increase for full-time ambulance coverage should or should not be enacted, and the purpose of this referendum is solely to obtain voter input.”

Most consequentially, it says the results “shall be advisory only and shall not, by themselves, authorize the levy of any tax, establishment of any district, issuance of debt, expenditure of Town funds, or any other governmental action except as may subsequently be authorized by law.”

In other words, a yes vote does not raise taxes and a no vote does not block them. The town board would still have to act.

The mailer labels the question an “ADVISORY REFERENDUM QUESTION,” so a resident who reads page four will see the word. The county Board of Elections listing does not. The proposition as the county has it printed contains no reference to the vote being advisory.

The wording also differs slightly between the two documents. The county lists the question as funding “ambulance services within the Town of LaFayette Ambulance Department, Inc.” The mailer’s version reads “ambulance services within the Town by the LaFayette Ambulance Department, Inc.” The resolution notes that the Onondaga County Board of Elections “has opined that the placement of such a referendum on the November ballot is appropriate.”

### The two June calls

Hoxie’s letter cites two calls from June that the mailer presents as evidence of the coverage gap. One was “an injury with an active arterial bleed that had to await TLC to respond from Onondaga Hill with a 19-minute response.” The other was “a difficulty breathing call that had to await Manlius Ambulance to respond from Manlius with an 18-minute response.”

The mailer does not give dates, locations or patient outcomes for either call, and CNY Signal has not independently verified them. They are presented here as the ambulance department’s account.

Hoxie’s letter also attributes to the American Heart Association the claim that cardiac arrest survival odds drop 10 percent for every minute without care. CNY Signal did not verify that against American Heart Association materials.

### The comparison the mailer leaves unfinished

The infographic states that “The Town of LaFayette is one of only two communities in Onondaga County without a 24/7 ambulance service.” It does not name the other community.

CNY Signal searched for the source of that comparison and could not establish which other Onondaga County community the town is referring to, or what standard the town used to define a community as lacking 24/7 service. Neither the mailer nor the town website identifies it. This remains unresolved.

McConnell’s letter also sets LaFayette against two regional failures. It says American Medical Response ended service in Cayuga County at the end of 2023, and that North Shore Ambulance Service in Oswego County closed effective July 26, 2024, after 75 years, leaving potential response times in Constantia, Cleveland, Central Square and Mexico of up to 38 minutes. Those characterizations are the supervisor’s, as printed in the town’s mailer, and CNY Signal has not independently confirmed them.

### What happens next

The town board resolved in January 2026 to put the question to voters, according to McConnell’s letter. Councilor Nate Loughlin was assigned as the board’s liaison to the ambulance department’s board of directors and presented the cost breakdown at the March 10 town board meeting, which the letter says can be viewed on the town’s Facebook page.

Town board meetings are held the second Tuesday of the month at 6 p.m. Polls open Nov. 3.

### Sources

– Town of LaFayette, “Ambulance Referendum Mailer,” four-page PDF: https://townoflafayetteny.gov/uploads/2/5/1/4/25140650/four_page_ambulance_mailer_for_print.pdf
– Town of LaFayette homepage, Public Notices and Announcements: https://townoflafayetteny.gov/
– Onondaga County Board of Elections, Unofficial Candidates List, Nov. 3, 2026, revised 8/5/2026: https://onondaga.gov/elections/wp-content/uploads/sites/191/2026/08/GE26-Candidates-List-NO-ADDRESSES.pdf
– Town of LaFayette voter information page: https://www.townoflafayetteny.gov/voter-information.html

All arithmetic checks in this article were performed by CNY Signal on the figures as printed in the town’s mailer.