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.”
Karin Marie Davis
