Shared Services in the wind.

Story By Christina Sack

 Is it time for shared services in Bradley Beach! This is the trend and with less volunteers this will happen. Bradley Beach is not an island what happens to our neighbors will happen here. As Mayor I will share services to save money and life and property Said W. E. May candidate for Bradley Beach Mayor this November.

Reprint from Our Lake Como

South Belmar FD to Merge with West Belmar!
It was great to see more people than usual at the June 18 meeting! (One reason for the larger audience was due to the yearly liquor license renewals.) To me, the biggest news was Councilman Doug Witte’s announcement that our fire department (yes, it’s still called “South Belmar”) will be merging with neighboring West Belmar's department. As Doug explained, it currently costs us about $36,000 a year to maintain the volunteer department. The merger will push that cost to $40,000 annually BUT, it will save us from having to make about $500,000 in necessary equipment upgrades, a cost that would ultimately be passed on to the taxpayers. Doug also cited a lack of volunteers as another reason the merger makes sense.

“By doing this, we’re guaranteed the town will be safe and we’ll have enough manpower. LC is one of the first in the state to have this type of interlocal agreement,” he said.

Under the merger plan, LC will respond to West Belmar calls and vice versa. Our truck will be joined in the Main Street Fire House by an additional one from West Belmar. Further, the Chief’s SUV will go to the Police Department, saving the PD the cost of purchasing another vehicle, which apparently it needs.

Reprint from the hub 

Mayors look to county for shared fire services

Budget caps and decline in volunteers pressure towns to share resources, expenses

BY KRISTEN DALTON Staff Writer

Balancingabudgetwitha2percent cap is one of the strongest arguments for shared services, according to local mayors who are looking to Monmouth County to facilitate interlocal agreements for sharing the costs of providing local fire departments with necessary equipment.
“When we talk fire trucks, that’s a very expensive item, and when municipalities have to purchase one, they’re not cheap,” said Eatontown Mayor Gerald Tarantolo in an interview on June 7.
“We would save lots of money because instead of now one municipality putting out the money for a fire truck, you would spread the cost over several fire departments.” Rumson Mayor John Ekdahl concurred.

“Certain things are going to get crowded outofthebudgetwhenyou’vegota2percent cap, and duplication of services is one of those items,” he said in a June 13 interview.
“What they’re trying to get away from, and what we talked about at the Two River Council of Mayors meeting [on May 24], was that all these towns are now buying the most expensive truck out there, namely a ladder truck. So the question is, does every town need a ladder truck or should there be more sharing?”
According to Tarantolo, the Eatontown Borough Council is considering the purchase of an $850,000 fire truck that is built to the specifications of its volunteer fire department. His concern is trying to balance the cost with the need. With a mutual aid agreement already in place among many adjacent communities in Eastern Monmouth County, Tarantolo said he believes an organized county shared-services agreement could help subsidize the cost.
“In case of a major event, we get responses from all of those towns that are involved in the mutual aid agreement. So if that is the case, wouldn’t it be nice if we shared the cost of the equipment that is used in the event of a fire?” he asked.
“The county could certainly play a role in some of this, and maybe the time is right where the county has to come in and try to unify an arrangement between municipalities to give them some assistance in making this transition.”
Instead, there has been a trend of expensive purchases among neighboring towns. Last year, local municipalities approved bonds for new equipment, including $1.1 million worth of vehicles and equipment for Red Bank, nearly $400,000 in Sea Bright and $592,000 in Shrewsbury.
This isn’t the first time the Eatontown mayor has proposed the county step in and take the lead for emergency shared services. Tarantolo was in charge of the emergency services advisory board of the Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Planning Authority, which was designated to determine the Fort Monmouth redevelopment plan.
One of the issues for local towns was compensating for the loss of the mutual aid formerly provided by the fort’s state-of-theart emergency services.
“We looked at ways in which we could consolidate fire services and police services as it related to the Fort Monmouth area,” explained Tarantolo.
The authority hired a consultant who suggested consolidating Eatontown, Tinton Falls and Oceanport emergency services, which would have saved a significant amount of money, according to Tarantolo.
“We weren’t very successful. We couldn’t get all three towns to readily agree that we should go into some kind of consolidated arrangement as it related to the Fort Monmouth properties. It never really got off the ground,” he said.
“You run into the issues of home rule: who does what, who holds the equipment, who has responsibility for various aspects of a fire event. So all of these issues start to rear their ugly head and the only way you can get them resolved is to have everyone jointly agree on some kind of a plan that could be initiated that could allow this sort of thing to happen.”
Another challenge has been the culture of the fire departments themselves, he said. Most companies are made up of unsalaried volunteers who dedicate their time and effort in emergency situations.
“We have this mentality today of home rule and you get a lot of fire departments that want to stay independent. That’s their culture, that’s the way it’s been traditionally, and they’re not ready to get into any kind of consolidated arrangement. So that’s the challenge that you’re confronted with,” explained Tarantolo.
Equally pressing is the idea of turning down a fire department’s request for new, updated vehicles and equipment that ultimately keep the volunteers safe.
“The volunteers perform a tremendous and complementary duty to the towns. I mean if we had paid fire departments, you’d never be under the budget cap. Since they are all volunteers and since they put in so much time, the towns are obligated to give them the best equipment possible to do their jobs,” explained Rumson Mayor John Ekdahl on June 13.
Additionally, volunteerism has declined in fire rescue and first aid squads over the years, said Ekdahl, who attributed the decrease in numbers to an increase in median family incomes. “I don’t see as much volunteerism today as I saw 15 or 20 years ago. The reasons are obvious; you’ve had so many families with two-income earners that there’s just not as much free time. Many people may be focusing more on their professions and less on doing volunteer work,” he said.
“I also think in the wealthier towns on the peninsula, as the median income goes up I think it’s directly proportional to the amount of volunteerism going down. It’s just that the census of our towns is changing partly because housing has become so expensive.”
Ekdahl said that the combination of the financial burden put on municipalities to provide the necessary equipment while remaining under the 2 percent budget cap, and the decrease in volunteerism could ultimately lead to a shared services agreement.
The consensus among the mayors’ council is that it won’t happen until the state or county takes the lead in creating fire districts and determining what towns would be working together and the kinds of equipment to be shared.
“Everybody’s on board with it, but we need a central player to sort of drive it home. There needs to be some kind of a master plan from either the county or the state, some oversight on it, because I don’t think it’s going to happen on its own,” said Ekdahl.
According to Bill Heine, public information officer for Monmouth County, the county has no current plans to mandate or organize any shared service agreement between towns looking to share fire equipment or services.
“That sounds like an interlocal agreement that they could work out themselves,” said Heine in an email on June 14.
“They could, however, purchase the equipment through the Monmouth County Improvement Authority (MCIA), which saves towns money because they get the benefit of the county’sAAAbond rating and the county’s guarantee of the bonds,” he stated.
This allows a town to receive the lowest possible interest rate as well as eliminates the need for bond insurance, he said.
According to Heine, any town can purchase equipment through the MCIA. Other than that, the only shared service the county currently provides is vehicle maintenance for a number of fire departments, including Asbury Park.
Other towns like Red Bank, Shrewsbury and Little Silver, that are located on the periphery of Fort Monmouth property currently benefit from the interlocal mutual aid agreement that is already in place.
“I think you’ll find that all of the volunteer fire departments around here, from what I understand, are very satisfied with the way it works,” said Donald Burden, Shrewsbury mayor.
“No matter what you do, you don’t want to negatively impact the volunteers, because they are volunteers, and if you had to pay for all of this, it’d cost a fortune.”
Burden said the idea of a future sharedservices agreement orchestrated by the county is still new and likely to evolve over the next few years.
“Just the cost mandates for each one of these small communities, it’s a likely solution to some of the economic problems we’re having,” he said.
“There’s not a shortage yet of volunteers, but again, down the line, as resources dry up and these people don’t have all the things that they think they need or want, it may become question.”