NORWICH – Nearly three weeks after U.S. service members pulled out of Norwich, final numbers are in for the Greater Chenango Cares Innovative Readiness Training program – an event that bridged military personnel with local residents in order to provide no-cost medical services to the community.
A breakdown of individuals served by the Greater Chenango Cares mission was given to members of the Chenango County Board of Supervisors at their regular monthly meeting on Monday. While not all people who benefited were residents of Chenango, organizers say the mission was still a massive success for the county.
The Chenango County Cares Innovative Readiness Training was a 10-day collaboration with the United States Department of Defense that brought dozens of service men and women into the area to provide no-cost health care, dental, vision and veterinary services to community members.
A grand total of 15,288 procedures were performed over the 10-day period. A breakdown shows that:
• 2,461 residents received medical treatment
• 2,779 residents received optometry services
• 4,969 residents received dental services
• Nearly 500 rabies vaccinations were given to domestic animals while 633 animals were spayed or neutered.
Although Chenango County shelled out $83,000 in overtime expenses for personnel during the mission, services provided to the community amount to $1.47 million, meaning that the county received a $5.63 return on investment for every $1 spent.
Additionally, of the 900 volunteer slots to fill in order to ensure the Greater Chenango Cares mission ran smoothly, organizers recruited people to fill 832 of those slots, which equates to approximately $81,000 in volunteer hours.
“The military considered it a huge success, and we considered it a huge success,” said Donna Jones, Director of the Chenango County Department of Planning and Development, the lead agency for the Greater Chenango Cares initiative.
Jones also recognized Southern Tier East, the Binghamton based regional planning and economic development organization that maintains a $10,000 per year contract with Chenango County. She noted that Southern Tier East provided $17,000 for incidental expenses for Greater Chenango Cares, including signage and advertising.
Chenango County emergency personnel also benefitted by working closely with military personnel throughout the mission. Emergency and military officials held daily briefings and debriefings, maintained communications, and worked together to coordinate events.
“Very early on, we decided that we would run this with an ICS structure, which is the Incident Command Structure, and that’s what we use for normal events or disasters,” said Chenango County Emergency Management Director Matthew Beckwith. “This very much mirrors our EOC operations during a disaster, and we exposed during this mission a lot of folks to the way the EOC operates. That's going to do nothing but benefit us as a county during times when there are disasters or other emergencies.”
Chenango County, in conjunction with Cortland County, has applied for an Innovative Readiness Training Grant to return to the region in 2016.