Newport plans internet switch, seeks ambulance storage and staffing fixes

Newport is trying to trim utility costs while the price of keeping basic services running keeps climbing. Town Manager Kyle Harris said the town plans to move internet service from Comcast to Fidium, a change expected to save more than $10,000 a year townwide, while leaders also search for a cheaper place to park a third ambulance and brace for more police staffing trouble.

The town’s June 1 manager report, posted June 16, laid out the pressure points in a community of about 6,500 people that has served as Sullivan County’s seat since 1761. Newport Fire-EMS operates as a combination department with full-time and on-call staff, and its EMS division says it runs three ALS-capable ambulances and a rescue truck while also providing primary ambulance service for Goshen.

Harris said only about half of the internet savings would show up in the general fund, but officials hope to use part of it to help pay for a Voice over IP phone upgrade and to cut back copper lines and redundant fax lines across the town, including at Police, EMS and the Town Office. The town also received no responses to its reevaluation request for proposals and will revise and reissue it.

The sharpest operational strain is in emergency medical storage. Harris said Newport is looking for an alternate place to keep the third ambulance because the planned storage site is no longer feasible and rent there is rising 20 percent. Since the old ambulance garage was removed for the Newport Community Center, the town has already spent more than $35,000 in rent to store one ambulance.

That cost sits alongside the rest of the Community Center project, whose materials say the proposed work required relocating the ambulance storage garage and a Buildings & Grounds storage building. In other words, the storage problem is no longer just a construction footnote; it has become an ongoing operating expense.

Fire-EMS also pursued a grant to update the town’s Hazardous Mitigation Plan, which is due in 2027. The application totals $15,750, with a federal share of $11,812.50 and a town share of $3,937.50 to be covered through in-kind work by town staff. Harris said five full-time staff completed baseline firefighter cancer screenings under state law approved through Senate Bill 352, first at the Fire Academy in Concord and with another round planned for the fall.

The police department is facing a different kind of pressure. Officer Walter Anderson and K9 Mako completed narcotics detection school, earned certification and returned to patrol by June 15. Sergeant Aaron Waterman also returned after two weeks of National Guard training.

But Officer Cody Foster resigned effective June 6 to take a job with the Grantham Police Department that paid about $6 an hour more, leaving Newport with a third open patrol officer position. The town said his departure also required training a new mobile forensic examiner at a cost of $4,845 plus travel expenses.

The staffing gap lands in a department already under strain. Newport’s 2025 voter guide said patrol officers were earning about $10,000 less than peers in nearby departments, or 15 percent less, and sergeants were about $15,000 behind, or 20 percent less. It said the town had lost six experienced officers over five years and spent nearly $500,000 on recruitment and training. The police contract approved at Town Meeting covers July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2028, but the town still faces a severe staffing crisis heading into the fall.