Fire Subcommittee Meeting of March 5, 2018

MINUTES HAMILTON TOWNSHIP COUNCIL

MARCH 5, 2018 Fire Subcommittee Meeting 6:30 p.m.

Mr. Martin: Thanks everybody for coming back. So leaving from last week, I know I had said some of the bigger issues, I thought we would try to tackle first. But thanks to Joe Monzo in putting together a budget which everybody should kind of have in front of them now. Maybe you got a chance to play with it a little bit as well. I think he did a pretty good job laying out some of the costs associated both with the existing fire districts and the new fire department. And some of them kind of jumped out at me that I thought maybe it be better if we kind of tackle them first to see what’s going on with some of these bigger operating expense items before we go to tackle manpower and salary wages and that type of thing. So, one of the first things that I asked, and thank you Dave for bringing it, is the estimate for additional costs the Township may need to bear with the move to a department. Everybody get a copy of this? So, I guess really it’s on the second page where we need to look. And so the first one there is I guess public works, four positions for a third shift. So are these like mechanics?

Mr. Kenny: I think that’s maintenance of vehicles.

Mr. Mull: So that would be including manpower and the maintenance of the vehicles?

Mr. Kenny: I would think so. Well, that’s probably the four positions, you figure with fringes.

Mr. Martin: Fifty salary, forty-five salary something like that? Who does the maintenance now for fire trucks, apparatus, things like that?

Chief Kraemer: Normally it’s a bid process. We’ll bid it out. We use currently Emergency Equipment Sales and Service is one, Fire Apparatus Repair, and then there’s a company Fire and Safety which is serving District 3 and District 4 because the newer rigs are still under warranties. We have five warranties on that fleet.

Mr. Mull: Actually, you might want to check on that, there might be ten because they bought the extended warranty.

Chief Kraemer: Yeah, that took to a five because it came with a one-year standard.

Mr. Martin: What do people think on whether it’s worth hiring… I’m trying to find where maintenance might be.

Mr. Mull: I can tell you there’s no way we spent $285,000 in maintenance, unless there’s a big job.

Mr. Kenny: You’re saying most of it is under warranty?

Chief Kraemer: No, just for four of the rigs. And the new one that’s going to come in is going to come with a one-year because financially, it wasn’t prohibitive. So I mean, the oil changes, brake jobs… absolutely, that’s something a garage can handle. But you’re talking about skilled labor, somebody that can do pump testing and pump repair. That’s a whole different animal as opposed to just an oil change. Ladder testings…things like that, that’s pretty pricey.

Mr. Martin: Did you have on Joe’s budget anything for maintenance? I thought I saw it, but now I can’t find it.

Mr. Mull: I see repairs. If you look at repairs under operations, it’s like $85,000-$92,000.

Mr. Martin: Yeah, it corresponds to about a $600,000 line-item presently. Maybe we can go back and find out, look at some of the specific budgets?

Chief Kraemer: Our repair budget in District 6 is $66,000; that’s what we budget for and we spend almost all of it every year, and that’s testing, repairs. One thing that we do run into an issue and that is a concern for us, especially as I stated last meeting, we’re working with minimal fleet. So no reserve ladder as it sits right now or reserve engines. So when something goes down, we need to get it fixed right away. So I don’t think that personally, I don’t think four additional staff in a garage is

a bad thing. The utility truck, that’s a simple fix that they can do. Plow units, our plow units right now have to go to Preston Hydraulics. Whereas, we’re running the same plows that the Township is running, so I think that there’s some benefit to that.

Mr. Martin: Will there be enough work to keep four people employed?

Chief Kramer: One of the things we try to recommend in order to preserve the fleet a little bit more is rather than go to a six-month preventive maintenance program, instead, reduce that down to a three- month program. So we get greater oil changes, better frequency because we start to identify issues a lot sooner. Air filters are cleaned every six months, changed every six months, brakes. If you go six months with a fire truck with not really knowing where the brakes are based off a PM schedule, that could be a concern. And then by the time we need to get those brakes fixed, we may be down to ten percent, now we have roter damage.

Mr. Martin: Dave, do you know off the top of your head... are the guys in the garage are they at full capacity? I’m just trying to figure out, do we need four, do we need six, do we need two?

Mr. Kenny: Well, I think that’s something that you could probably start with a couple and see. I could talk to Dave Carothers, but I think they’re figuring night shift. You’ve got third shift down here, and I think that’s when they try to do most of the maintenance stuff. Of course, your business is a little different, it’s 24 hours. So it doesn’t really matter.

Chief Kraemer: I think staffing of two would be okay as a start and then…

Mr. Mull: They have fuel on here also. That’s still in maintenance in the budgets.

Chief Kraemer: We still may need to bid certain contracts for those specialty things.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, there may be certain things, sure that you couldn’t do in-house.

Mr. Martin: I can’t imagine they’re going to know how to do the ladder testing.

Mr. Mull: They’re not certified.

Mr. Buroczi: That would be a whole new process of itself.

Mr. Martin: Building and grounds, four positions. Is this more like you think the maintenance type stuff?

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, I think that’s maintenance of the buildings and maintenance and cleaning I would think.

Mr. Mull: We do the basic maintenance.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, that’s what I would think. You guys do the cleaning.

Mr. Mull: And maintenance, if there’s lightbulbs need to be changed, we do it.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, that kind of simple stuff. So that’s probably high. I wouldn’t think we need four.

Mr. Mastrangelo: We can get away with two on that too. And then if you need more…

Mr. Kenny: We’ll have to wait and see what you really need.

Mr. Mull: If we have an outlet that needs to be fixed.

Mr. Kenny: If something breaks, but yeah, the routine stuff, you guys are sweeping up the floors I guess and like you said lightbulbs, the simple stuff you do.

Mr. Mull: The major issues would be garage doors malfunction needs to be fixed, things that we can’t do, but the everyday maintenance and cleaning.

Mr. Kenny: That’s what I would think, that would just continue then that you guys will do what you do now.

Mr. Martin: Maybe talk to Dave about that too, and see are his guy’s kind of full capacity where we lean more towards hiring one or two people or planning to hire one or two more people? Or we can hold off for the first six months, you know what I mean?

Mr. Kenny: Sure.

Mr. Martin: And kind of see, thought with that one is maybe zero to two. (Inaudible) contract, I guess that’s just because…

Mr. Mull: I actually think there’s districts that have them already, right?

Chief Kraemer: Yeah, District 9 has a contract.

Mr. Mull: I think we do too.

Chief Kraemer: We’re just an on call.

Mr. Martin: That’s not that big.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, that’s not that big a ticket item if we can cover all the buildings with that. That’s not too bad.

Mr. Martin: Personnel, one position.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, to help out.

Mr. Martin: Payroll check processing, that’s probably just a fee, they’re like ADP or whatever, or Prime Point.

Mr. Kenny: That’s all that would be.

Mr. Martin: The hand scanners.

Mr. Kenny: That’s a one shot cost, we’d have to put that in each fire house I guess.

Mr. Mull: We just couldn’t operate with them. There’s just no way it would work in a firehouse.

Mr. Kenny: Why wouldn’t it operate?

Mr. Mull: Because of the way our schedules operate. Guys come in early or leave early, or a guy works for somebody else on a mutual exchange. I mean, the chief would speak to that, there’s just no way. Because we don’t even do that now. We write in a book when we’re at work or it’s done on a scheduling system on the computer.

Mr. Kenny: Because I know the scanning system goes right into the payroll.

Mr. Mastrangelo: They tried it for a short time with the department, I don’t know if you remember that.

Mr. Kenny: It didn’t work for the police. Alright, there may be a better way we’re going to have to approach that for the fire department then too.

Mr. Martin: My guess is however the police department does it, it will be something very similar.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, similar to that.

Mr. Martin: Yeah, because you guys have the shift changes too and all that.

Mr. Mastrangelo: Yeah, the roll call.

Mr. Martin: It will be the same in theory kind of.

Mr. Mull: Which is the same thing we do now, the officer puts the people in the computer who are working.

Mr. Mastrangelo: It will be like our roll call.

Mr. Martin: So that one we’ll probably nix. And then I guess two clerks in the department is different than a secretary? Is that kind of just like admin staff?

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, that’s what we’re assuming that the fire department will need like two clerks plus a secretary.

Mr. Martin: I understand the secretary. Chief do you think you need two like clerks in the department?

Chief Kraemer: Fire Prevention definitely would need one. And probably the administrative deputy would need one, and then one for the Chief. I think with the model that we presented last week, I

think that we would be able to manage on the operational side. The administrative side definitely would need more assistance.

Mr. Martin: I skipped the insurance, but the insurance was included in the… I can’t imagine that’s additional insurance over what the districts already have?

Mr. Kenny: No, I wouldn’t think it is. That would just be what the Township…

Mr. Martin: Because it’s actually almost exactly what Joe had estimated is almost exactly I think what was on the budget.

Mr. Mull: I’m pretty sure he called the JIF, didn’t he?

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, that could be what John did, he had somebody call around and get those numbers for us.

Mr. Martin: Anybody think of anything else the town would need additional in any other departments that…

Chief Kraemer: What about the IT side? Right now, everybody does their own IT work and that gets to be pretty expensive for us.

Mr. Martin: We have computer maintenance on…is that what you’re talking about or are you talking about something else?

Mr. Mull: Who does the Township’s website?

Mr. Kenny: We have three people in our IT department now and the police have somebody, one or two there. Although, we’re looking at that, whether that’s all necessary. So we may need to add somebody here or see if these three could handle it.

Mr. Martin: Every year, we have to do something with Edmunds or whatever?

Mr. Kenny: No, no that was just a change over. That cost some extra money on the changeover software, so that’s over and done with. Yeah, we just have people here that can configure the computers, do some of the repair on them, the telephone work… that kind of stuff. Which is what you guys probably need and then of course there’s always software licenses too.

Chief Kraemer: The reporting software and admin software.

Mr. Martin: So Chief, in Joe’s budget he had the districts currently spending like $75,000 for a line that said computer maintenance. Now some of the districts are much higher than others. So 4 is at $15,000, District 3 is at $25,000?

Chief Kraemer: There’s a simple reason for that. What we’ve done is a lot of shared service agreements and District 3 is the host district for the firehouse software. District 9 is the host for the Power BMS program.

Mr. Martin: Bringing it in-house, would that get rid of some of those costs? Like say we went to use the Township’s IT department?

Chief Kraemer: I think a lot of those are licensing issues. It’s what the software is going to be. I mean, one of the things that we’ve been looking at, Captain Bose and I are looking at scheduling software. So that would be a question as to what the police use. Is that something that… are we going to be using our own standalone scheduling software? Because we could commit to it now knowing that we’re going to use it. But I hate to commit to a new agreement if that’s the case because we found an easy way or cost effective way to step into the program without saying too much.

Mr. Kenny: Is all the districts are pretty much uniform with their computers now?

Chief Kraemer: No.

Mr. Kenny: Everything is all over the lot?

Mr. Mull: Yes, it’s all over.

Mr. Kenny: So there may be some initial startup costs.

Chief Kraemer: Like I would recommend Google Drive that the town is using. Anything we can do cloud based like email servers, is definitely where we’re going.

Mr. Buroczi: The town has like an intranet that they use.

Mr. Kenny: We have some large servers downstairs but that’s backup to the police and the police have the server there. We’re also storing a lot of stuff on the cloud. Like all the bodycams for the police, that’s like $100,000 per year just to store the bodycam stuff. You guys wouldn’t have that kind of stuff at least.

Mr. Mull: The only thing that we use consistently is our recording system is all done online. So that has to be connected to a server.

Chief Kraemer: Our in-houses are static IP’s. So that would be depending on how the communications breakdown goes and all that.

Mr. Mull: And then NTD’s again, services for that too, directly hooked to the CAD for the dispatch center.

Mr. Kenny: Is that all uniform among all the trucks now?

Mr. Mull: Not yet, still working on that.

Mr. Martin: Scott, is there anything the volunteers do with IT that you guys need access to or anything like that?

Mr. Goldsmith: That would just fall under as far as what’s going to happen with the building itself whether the services are run through certain buildings or, other than that, no.

Mr. Martin: Is that more for like rent type stuff you’re talking about? Or what are you talking about with building?

Mr. Goldsmith: For property related businesses like companies who run certain things within like bingo or band functions which there’s a couple in here… DeCou, Colonial.

Mr. Martin: Oh, so if they rent out the hall kind of thing?

Mr. Goldsmith: Yes.

Chief Kraemer: Whatever we do, scheduling software, I’d love to bring them onboard so we go to the C-Pro is what we’re looking at. They would get the same blanket message knowing that there’s an open shift. We talked about filling, using the volunteers when short staffed. So everybody would get the notice to know that it’s open and you could respond to it. We’re trying to be a little bit more effective with that and that would be cloud-based.

Mr. Buroczi: I got one question I probably should have brought up Scott, is that I remember last meeting you said about taking over the volunteer buildings. Remember that if they’re volunteer owned, we could see if you could take them over? Some of those buildings still rent out their halls and have a bar.

Mr. Kenny: That’s going to be a whole other issue when we deal with some of the larger ones that have that.

Mr. Mull: I know with Colonial, he just said bingo. Colonial still does bingos.

Mr. Kenny: Nottingham does a lot of banquets and dinners still. Who maintains all the kitchen facilities and stuff?

Mr. Mull: Over at Nottingham, it’s Rosa’s.

Mr. Kenny: Okay, they just lease it out to Rosa’s.

Mr. Mull: They lease it out to her, she gets all… there’s three of them now. There’s her, Mastori’s and Mafalda’s.

Mr. Kenny: We’ve kind of done that with Sayen House; you can pick one of three.

Mr. Mull: The fire company itself is responsible for the cleanliness and the health department, also for the liquor license and all that stuff.

Mr. Kenny: What are they there, club licenses I guess?

Ms. Sabo: No, no, no, each event has to obtain a social affairs permit. The hall does not have its own liquor license. They have to get a contracted caterer that has a liquor license.

Mr. Martin: Any other start-up costs or additional Township costs that you can think of as we sit here? Other than the like we talked about some of the insurance and maybe not as many positions.

Mr. Kenny: No, I don’t think so.

Mr. Martin: I can bring those to Joe to factor in additional lines then. One of the things that caught my eye on this budget was fire hydrant service fees I guess we’re paying. It’s like $1.4 million. Can you explain that to me? That’ seems like a lot of money to pay every year for…

Mr. Kenny: It is a lot of money, but that’s the way it’s always been for hydrants.

Mr. Buroczi: Chief found an ordinance from 2008.

Chief Kraemer: I don’t know how accurate that is or if they’ve updated their scheduling. But roughly we pay about $46 on a hydrant per quarter. And then there’s estimated…

Mr. Kenny: That’s the City of Trenton.

Mr. Martin: That’s Trenton Water Works.

Mr. Kenny: And then Aqua charges you too.

Mr. Buroczi: Aqua is on the back side, Groveville, that area.

Mr. Kenny: Because I remember it went up significantly that one year probably around this time. There was for a while but then they raised… Yeah, because they had different rates out here than they had in the city. So all they did was they raised their rates in the city to make them comparable.

Mr. Martin: Alright so that’s the $1.4 million?

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, that’s a tough one.

Chief Kraemer: I don’t know if the town has the ability to negotiate or as the fire districts because we are so fragmented and we can’t agree on it.

Mr. Kenny: I don’t think we really have any authority. They’re subject to the BPU, but only to the extent as long as they charge their people the same they’re charging us. So in the city, it’s probably circular…they’re charging the fire departments, but it’s come right back.

Chief Kraemer: They were paying quite a bit for lack of timely repairs. I think we can get some leverage.

Mr. Kenny: Trenton Water Works has been a nightmare for a long time. You can tap into some of their leakage. They lose like 50% of the water that leaves the plant, they can’t account for it.

Chief Kraemer: That may even be updated beyond that. That’s just what I could find.

Mr. Martin: It comes to $40 a year.

Chief Kraemer: One thing it does help us with is that we know that we have a water system that’s in place. So I have to meet with ISO next week or within two weeks. Our insurance ratings aren’t as good as what they could or should be as a department and ISO is well aware of what’s going on within Hamilton.

Mr. Martin: You mean homeowners insurance and things like that for people. The other big expense and I know we touched on it briefly was social security payments. Do you know whether…

Mr. Kenny: The police currently don’t pay into social security. And you said some of the districts do?

Mr. Buroczi: All of the districts do.

Mr. Kenny: All of the districts are paying into social security?

Mr. Buroczi: The reason why they’re paying into social security was because back when I got hired, prior to 1994, they were in the public employee’s pension system. And at that point, they paid into social security because of the PEPS was low at that point, so they paid into that. Well, there’s a big lawsuit that the fire departments did through the union, through the state that got all those guys public employees all their time transferred into police and fire. So at that time, they went into police and fire, and everything got grandfathered all the money. They just kept paying into social security, so it’s just an ongoing thing that we kept paying into, so we get full social security when we retire also.

Mr. Kenny: So your guys want to get out of social security?

Mr. Buroczi: They don’t.

Mr. Kenny: They don’t yeah, because they’ve been in it for…

Mr. Buroczi: They’ve been in it for so long.

Mr. Kenny: Because I’ve just heard a discussion that PFRS if the unions take it over, they want to bump the premium 15%. That’s what I heard the discussion was. Because so many of the cops aren’t in social security, so you guys are getting hit twice. You get the social security deduction and this. So yeah, that would be a cost to the Township, but that should be built into these numbers.

Mr. Martin: But it’s built into here, the issue would be and again, I don’t know how then the Township goes and they’re not doing the police but they’re doing the fire. Because they’re all under the same system then.

Mr. Kenny: I don’t know if the police want to get into it. Because they figure they’re paying so much into PFRS already.

Chief Kraemer: Most of them are probably using their deferred comp for that too.

Mr. Mastrangelo: Well yeah. I was with parks and recreation before I was a cop, so my two years went into police and fire also. I ended up with twenty-eight years instead of twenty-six. But years ago, they took out social security. When we worked side jobs, we put in social security. So like me, I have enough quarters in, so I’ll be able to get… but because you have that pension, they say expect about half of what they tell you of social security for a cop. But anyway as far as police go, they haven’t kicked in.

Mr. Buroczi: Because we have some guys on the job that don’t have their quarters in. They’re paid into social security, so if they don’t have their quarters in, how are they going to get…

Mr. Mastrangelo: So they continue so they can get their quarters in.

Mr. Martin: So you guys want social security payments to keep going for you guys or you don’t care or grandfathered?

Mr. Mull: I think we need to see how it plays out down the road. I don’t want to give you an answer now and then…

Mr. Martin: That’s fine, just talk to your guys about it. Because again, I mean, that’s…

Mr. Mull: For Nick and I it’s not a huge deal, right. For guys who have their quarters in and are done, it’s not that big a deal. But for guys who don’t, and then we say you’re not going to get your social security.

Mr. Martin: Yeah, because that’s $1.3 million here. I mean, you guys know what you’re… I tried to talk to Joe about this today a little bit, but he was actually doing other real work as well…PFRS rate, he put it down as 28%, is that what it is?

Mr. Mull: It’s really an actuary report, so that could change based on the actuary report of PFRS. It goes up and down every year.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, Christie had changed the assumption, Murphy changed it back which should lower the premium. Because we’re not sure if we’re getting a new bill from PFRS now because we have a bill now for everybody. I don’t know if it’s going to change or not with this switch back in the assumption.

Mr. Mull: It all depends on what the actuary report comes back as and what the rate is. It’s based on what’s underfunded.

Mr. Martin: I was playing with the spreadsheet a little bit and I put the 2019 budget at 130 people. So pretend nothing changes, and the PFRS contribution rate was still $1.1 million higher for 2019 than it was for all the districts combined.

Mr. Mull: I could probably get that number for you since the union is in the middle of taking over the pension system.

Mr. Kenny: They should know that.

Mr. Mull: So they will have a better idea.

Mr. Martin: Because like I said, when I just put, playing with Joe’s spreadsheet, I put it at 130. And that contribution was at $1.1 million higher than all the districts. And so that caught me as a huge potential change.

Chief Kraemer: I think this brings everybody over to current rate and then provides a 2% cost of living increase, that’s how I read this.

Mr. Martin: So a lot of things, Joe just did it and I wish he was here to explain. But a lot of things especially on the expense side, he just did it as a 2% increase. So when you look at his total FD’s to local fire districts, all that’s just summing districts 2 through 8. So, if you’re looking at PFRS, it’s either 2.25 number, that’s just summing districts 2 through 9. He didn’t go and apply 28% to the $11.6 million number, but that’s what he did for the 2019. He applied 28% to the… I guess it’s $11.8 plus $3.4 number and that’s how we got the $4.287. But what I did just for trying to compare apples to apples for a minute was I just put the number down to 130, and that PFRS number was at $3.3 million. And that just still caught me off guard as an increase. He wouldn’t expect it to increase a million dollars just for switching. You wouldn’t expect it to increase anything in theory I guess, right?

Mr. Mull: Like I said, it’s based on the actuary. But I’ve never seen it go up that much. It’s usually like…

Mr. Martin: It might go up $50,000, $100,000, $150,000.

Mr. Kenny: It could be more than that.

Mr. Mull: It’s .286 or .289.

Mr. Kenny: I think our PFRS for the township for police this year is going up $350,000 or $400,000 over last year.

Mr. Martin: But I mean, like you still wouldn’t expect it to increase $1.1 million?

Mr. Kenny: No.

Mr. Mull: Is that $4 million including employee contributions or was it just employer contributions?

Mr. Martin: All I know is….

Mr. Mull: Because we’re paying 10% either way.

Mr. Martin: All I know is that 4.2 number is 28% of $11.8 and $3.4.

Mr. Mull: It’s $27.35 in 2018 so. Even if you popped it at 28%, it shouldn’t have been double.

Mr. Martin: It’s like a 50%...

Mr. Mull: Fifty percent increase?

Mr. Martin: Because it went from $2.2 to $3.3 just using 130 guys in 2019 as well. And again, Joe is using, he’s assuming all the information he’s getting from every district is accurate.

Mr. Mull: It’s tough to… I’m sure he did a great job, but it’s tough to look at these budgets and get the accurate information.

Mr. Martin: The biggest one is if you look at District 5, it says they only paid $111,000 and District 4 paid….

Mr. Mull: A difference of six people versus twelve. For eight people, they have two captains, two firemen and four drivers. So they have eight and we have sixteen.

Mr. Martin: So what does District 8 have because they only paid $84,000.

Mr. Mull: Eight.

Chief Kraemer: And District 4 has seventeen.

Mr. Martin: So that could be why because those numbers… They still have a budget though, but I guess because they’re hiring people at such a low salary, all the new people.

Mr. Mull: And that was on the referendum though, so that would be money after the…

Mr. Martin: Some things, we’ll ask Joe to maybe look at, but if you guys can look at it too because that would be a huge potential increase out of nowhere of $1.1 million.

Mr. Mull: I don’t see it going up that much.

Mr. Martin: No, that was a 50% increase.

Mr. Mull: And quite frankly, when the union takes over, the actuary should be balanced out. It would be unfunded liability what would be left.

Mr. Martin: See if you can find out for next time then. The other issue I wanted to talk about was the revenue outside of taxation. So like the interest, the surplus, and I wanted to see what if anything there we can count on staying. So the interest of $20,000 I assume that would still be… because the town is going to realize more interest by having that money sit in the bank. I assume it would be the same amount of money.

Mr. Mull: The surplus I don’t think is correct though. Is that including restricted and unrestricted funds?

Mr. Martin: No, this is the interest.

Mr. Mull: No, I’m talking about the line item.

Mr. Martin: Oh, the surplus? So this was I mean, you had District 4 according to this, is $400,000 of surplus in 2018.

Mr. Mull: It’s not actually true, it’s partially true.

Chief Kraemer: That was used surplus money to offset budgets to stay within the cap. So that’s not the surplus numbers, that’s the amount of surplus that that district used to stay within the cap.

Mr. Martin: So my concern is there’s the total budget and then there’s the total budget to be raised by taxation. For 2018, the districts are using a $1,000,000 in surplus to stay within cap. So we can’t necessarily expect that to keep using a $1,000,000 in surplus every year. So my concern is then that $27,000,000 number is really more of like a $26,000,000 number.

Mr. Mull: Well, District 4 for example, that $412,000, they didn’t receive that. They received $215,000. The rest of the money was from 2016 that they had to show on because of the accounting mistake, right Chief? So technically that money, it’s spent and gone. But they had to show it on their budget.

Mr. Kenny: That’s the problem, those are one shot revenues.

Mr. Martin: Yeah, so it drops the $1.1 essentially down to $850,000 or something like that. But we just can’t realize $850,000 in surplus every year. The SFSP Grant of $113,000 is that something to expect every year roughly?

Chief Kraemer: That’s a state grant for fire prevention.

Mr. Martin: The PILOT, is that the American Metro?

Chief Kraemer: Actually, that number should increase. That money is based on I think it’s just in District 2. Whereas, now in a municipal department so I believe that there’s more money.

Mr. Martin: The town would just keep it instead of …

Mr. Kenny: There’s not a lot more, I mean, that will become taxable probably not for another six years or so. It was a twenty-year PILOT I think.

Chief Kraemer: I can’t remember what Chris said was left. I remember it was a little bit more than $12,5.

Mr. Martin: But in any event the $12.5 is still going to be realized by the town. The town is going to keep it instead of distributing it.

Mr. Mull: That pension rate in 2018… if you times it by the 27.35% in 2018, it should have been $3,200,000 not $2,200,000.

Mr. Martin: Going back to the PFRS?

Mr. Mull: Going back to the PFRS yeah. A mistake was made on the front half, not the back half. It should have been $3,200,000.

Mr. Martin: Because that’s what it essentially came to when I put in 130. That came to $3.3 million, but that would account for the…

Mr. Kenny: For 2018, you’re saying it was, it should be $3,200,000?

Mr. Mull: Off of the total fire departments that he went off of $11,000,000.

Mr. Martin: But again, he reached that 2018 number by just summing…

Mr. Mull: Summing the rest of it up. But if I took it off of the top number where he added the two numbers in 2019, it came up to $3,236,960.

Mr. Kenny: So that’s going to bring my number, his total up from $22,000,000 to $23,766,000.

Mr. Martin: Correct. The life hazard. Now Chief, I think you were talking about this last week how there’s potential to make more money off of that?

Chief Kraemer: Yeah, once the fire prevention bureau once stood up is recommending non-life hazard inspection fees. And also, when you sell a home you’re supposed to get an inspection from the fire inspector for fire extinguishers, CO detectors, things like that. So there is a potential for some revenue to be made in that too.

Mr. Martin: Are you guys, and I say you guys, meaning the districts, is that being done now?

Chief Kraemer: No.

Mr. Mull: It can’t be because it’s a township ordinance.

Chief Kraemer: And Scott has some information and things proposed for the ordinance change.

Mr. Kenny: I think part of the normal C/O inspection of a sale of a house is smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, so that’s already being done.

Mr. Martin: So we’re not going to get that then?

Mr. Kenny: Yeah.

Chief Kraemer: But I don’t know if they’re charging for that. We’re proposing like a $50 fee for that.

Mr. Kenny: We charge for a certificate of occupancy.

Mr. Mull: See like in Ewing, I own rental properties, and every time I rent….

Mr. Kenny: Are you supposed to have a fire extinguisher in your house? Nobody is ever going to use one.

Mr. Mull: West Windsor does it. West Windsor has it a full time job.

Mr. Martin: So in Ewing, both the town comes out and somebody from fire prevention comes out and you have to pay two, you get like two C/O’s?

Mr. Mull: No, you get a fire inspection certificate and a certificate of occupancy. West Windsor does the same thing. If you go to rent an apartment, you go buy a house or you rent a house, the fire truck comes out, they go in and push your smoke detector, make sure your fire extinguisher is there and your carbon monoxide detector is there, and they charge you $75.

Mr. Martin: Do you know… when I bought it, I just got my C/O. Do you know what they do whether they do any type of thing with the fire extinguisher, smoke alarm, things like that?

Mr. Kenny: I think they make sure you have one and they check smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors to make sure that they are working.

Mr. Mull: Even in rentals?

Mr. Kenny: Oh yeah. Because rentals it’s probably a more intense C/O than on a sale because every time it changes hands on a rental, it gets a new C/O.

Mr. Mull: ... the fire violations also….

Mr. Buroczi: The fire inspection. If they’re going to like a strip mall or something like that to do an inspection, I see some of the firemen writing out a ticket and they have to pay a fine when they go back to the fire prevention bureau.

Mr. Martin: That’s done now or you’re saying…

Mr. Mull: That’s done now.

Mr. Martin: Is there a lot of room then? I mean, at a minimum, that number should… Joe estimating 275 should be safe. Because if they’re estimating 270 for 2018, I imagine the 269 number of 2018, I imagine the 275 number is accurate or you think it’s… There’s things that we aren’t doing that we could be doing.

Mr. Mull: For income you mean?

Mr. Martin: On the right hand side.

Mr. Mull: If you look at permit fees, and you look at non-life hazard use fees, and you look at smoke detector and inspections, he’s estimating a total income of $675,000. Now he did this for a living in Trenton. This is what he did before he came to Hamilton. But I trust his knowledge and experience in this because he’s not… this isn’t his first time doing it. He brought many times about doing the non-life hazard use fees.

Mr. Kenny: We don’t even have to do non-life hazard protection. The life hazards are required by law?

Chief Kraemer: The non-life hazards are done every two years.

Mr. Kenny: Okay.

Mr. Martin: The life hazards do every year.

Chief Kraemer: Yeah, depending on the usage.

Mr. Martin: Like hospitals are more?

Chief Kraemer: Yeah, quarterly. Other life hazards have to be done yearly and then non-life hazards, they’re on the schedule to do every two years.

Mr. Martin: So you’re saying right now Scott doesn’t even have the… he could be doing more in theory but is he going to have the manpower to do it?

Chief Kraemer: The issue is that he oversees all but I think two or three districts. So right now, his part-time manpower along with the full timer himself is… that’s just what he has to cover what he’s doing. To expand the program, his recommendation is three full timers, himself of course, and another fire inspector fulltime and another fire inspector (also an educator) which would be a dual role position, and then seven part timers. There was a question that came up and I just ask you, as far as part time work. Some of the personnel do part time fire inspections. Now given the municipality we’ll be taking this over, my take is that employment arrangement would stop or would it continue? Being able to be a firefighter and then do part-time inspections?

Mr. Kenny: Meaning some of our full-time firefighters and then part-time?

Chief Kraemer: Yes.

Mr. Kenny: That would probably have to stop because I think you’d get into overtime issue and everything else with that.

Mr. Mull: We fought that once though. Because they had civil service title as a firefighter, they’re not doing firefighter... and then they have job 2 specs which would be the part-time fire inspector.

Mr. Kenny: I’m just concerned with the overtime laws since it’s the same employer that they could make an overtime plan for that. Why wouldn’t you use retired guys for inspectors?

Chief Kraemer: Some inspectors are overtime.

Mr. Kenny: Because that way you don’t have to pay to train them anymore. No point in sending them to fire training and everything to just doing inspections.

Mr. Mull: Same thing they’re doing now though. These guys are all certified. They’re not hiring anybody and training them. If they have the qualifications to do it that’s what they use.

Chief Kraemer: Some are retired guys.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, it would seem to make more sense. I think it would be a lot cheaper.

Mr. Mull: Absolutely.

Chief Kraemer: Scott has a plan, and he uses both right now. It’s just there might be three or four guys that are full time firefighters that are doing part time work for the other district. And a couple of them kept asking. Who better to ask than you.

Mr. Kenny: I think it may be legally a problem on overtime, since they’re working for the same employer. Right now, they’re working for different employers, working for a district.

Chief Kramer: Because we even have a guy who’s a full time firefighter that works for Township inspections. We assume that would stop then too?

Mr. Kenny: Who’s that?

Chief Kraemer: Kevin McGockal.

Mr. Martin: That would be my assumption as well the same as Dave’s. It would be the same employer.

Chief Kraemer: That’s kind of what I told them, but I figured I’d ask. It doesn’t hurt.

Mr. Mull: I can check with civil service because we had a ruling on that. Because we had job 1 and job 2 in District 7. Where full timers were doing inspections part time and civil service ruled in our favor. So if I find that opinion or get it from our attorney, I’ll bring it in.

Mr. Kenny: Well, that would be interesting, but civil service isn’t the one who makes the ruling under the Fair Labor Standards Act. That would be my concern. I wouldn’t want to build up a big claim against this for overtime down the road.

Chief Kraemer: It could happen.

Mr. Kenny: But yeah, if you have something, we’ll take a look at it.

Mr. Martin: Getting back to life hazard. So Scott said there would be $600,000 potentially in revenue, but some of that’s things like the C/O which we already are doing.

Mr. Mull: I don’t know what you put in before, but that was not included in the C/O.

Mr. Martin: So in his mind, you would have one person go from the fire department and charge $50, one person go from the town and charge $50. Like you said they do in Ewing. I mean, at least for now, I’d say my gut tells me we would just do the one for $50 kind of thing and not have two people go out and do two different inspections. District 6 looks like it has $115,000? Do you know what that is?

Chief Kraemer: Oh yeah, I do. That is me being the fire chief in two other districts.

Mr. Kraemer: Okay, so you guys get…

Chief Kraemer: There’s an agreement in place based off the number of manpower and so on and so forth for every job they want me to do.

Mr. Martin: So that will go away then?

Chief Kraemer: Yeah, all that.

Mr. Martin: Okay. Then the room rentals, I guess we would keep as is. And that’s what Joe did total of 66.

Mr. Mull: Rentals for the buildings?

Chief Kraemer: Yeah, what you’re looking at rentals as far as like District 2 for example has a facility that is able to be rented out for training to the state or whoever wants to use it…District 9 does the same thing. We’ve already identified in reports that there’s going to have to be some improvements to the buildings. And if we could centralize or create another couple training facilities. Nottingham for example has a big ball room. I don’t know what the plan is for that. Colonial is centralized. So there is still the ability to make some revenue if you can outsource or rent that space.

Mr. Martin: I saw like one going back to what we had the… I think somebody was and I think it’s here, District 3 - $45,000. I think that was like for power rental or something that I saw on one of these documents.

Chief Kraemer: There’s a tower for cellular, that’s still going to be there.

Mr. Martin: And whoever it is rented out to now, I’m sure…

Mr. Buroczi: Verizon, they put a whole new tower up, cell phone service all that stuff.

Mr. Martin: So my guess is, that stuff we’d just keep…. That’s what I mean, the $66,000 in additional rental fees and stuff like that, the Township can still realize versus the districts realizing.

Chief Kraemer: Honestly, I think you’ll probably realize more once it’s under different management.

Mr. Mull: I was thinking the other way around.

Chief Kraemer: You were thinking us renting the space from them?

Mr. Martin: Going through some of the other expenses, especially the ones that Joe just did a 2% increase on. So the rents, that’s rent paid to the fire companies probably right now, right?

Chief Kraemer: Yes.

Mr. Martin: The second to last page. The one that says 2% increase it’s almost all the way down on the column. So the first one is rent for $34,000. So that may stay or that may go.

Mr. Mull: Rent is more than $34,000. Is that for the entire Township?

Mr. Martin: I guess right now it’s $33,500 based on the…

Mr. Mull: District 8 alone is $65,000. I guess they didn’t report…

Mr. Martin: Oh yeah right now, I’m looking at District 8, they don’t have anything under their rent column.

Mr. Buroczi: And they pay $65,000 a year to their volunteer fire company. But their building and land is owned by a gun club and then the volunteers rent the building and land from the gun club and then the fire commissioners rent the building form the volunteer fire company.

Mr. Kenny: That needs the most repairs, Colonial. I remember it was a pretty big number.

Chief Kraemer: It’s a big facility.

Mr. Kenny: There’s an awful lot of it you don’t need for a firehouse. That’s the problem with some of these buildings, you’re using 10% of the floor space for the fire company.

Mr. Mull: It could be $25,000 at least. I know it was $25,000, but that didn’t include repairs and phones. So you’re talking another…

Mr. Buroczi: Well, that’s because the volunteers handle that. They pay all that.

Mr. Mull: They do not. The commissioners just put brand new bay doors on that firehouse.

Mr. Buroczi: They did?

Mr. Mull: Yeah.

Mr. Buroczi: I was told the opposite. I was told they pay the $25,000 rent and then the volunteers from the catering hall are responsible for everything else.

Mr. Mull: No.

Mr. Martin: So the rent, we’ve got to look into more.

Mr. Mull: What I would do is maybe the Clerk’s office can do it, is send out a letter to the fire companies asking the commissioner’s rate because you can’t OPRA a private company.

Chief Kraemer: The real question is what truly is going to happen with the buildings. I understand what you’re saying. It’s just a matter of if that rent number goes away, but then you also have volunteer fire companies that have bank accounts that are earmarked for that organization. So what

happens with those funds? There’s a lot of theories floating around about what happens with that and nobody really knows.

Mr. Martin: The fire companies are a 501-C3?

Chief Kraemer: Not all of them.

Mr. Martin: What are some of them?

Chief Kraemer: District 6 isn’t.

Mr. Martin: Because if it’s a private entity.

Mr. Mull: There’s a difference between a 501-C3. We just got hit with that as a union too. A 501- C3, 501-C4…

Mr. Kenny: I think we said before, it’s clear if it’s owned by the District, it comes to the Township. That’s cut and dry. The volunteer fire companies, this is a little strange that some gun club owns it actually. If a volunteer fire company owns the building, there’s a good chance it comes to the Township as well. Now if it’s some separate entity like a gun club which has been collecting rent all these years, I don’t see how we have a claim to it then to that property.

Mr. Buroczi: Yeah, because I think we talked the rent from the fire commissioners the tax dollars go to the volunteer fire company to pay their mortgage. Somehow it was owned, now it’s owned really by the taxpayers.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, because all the money for years has really been coming from the taxpayers for all the volunteer fire companies. Colonial sounds like that’s the one that’s different.

Mr. Mull: That might be something we need to get a legal opinion on quick to see if we could even…

Mr. Kenny: To see who actually owns the thing.

Mr. Mull: Would the Township would have to take it over and own it at that point or would they still own it and…

Mr. Kenny: I assume the gun club would still own it.

Mr. Mull: But they might not even rent the building out to the Township.

Mr. Buroczi: The tax records should show that right?

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, they should be paying property taxes on it. Alright, I’ll look into what’s going on with District 8.

Mr. Martin: What are the ones that we currently pay rent for?

Chief Kraemer: District 5, District 6, District 8, and 7.

Mr. Mull: 2, 3, 4, and 9 are all taxpayer owned.

Chief Kraemer: And District 5 is an anomaly though because it’s part owned by the district and part owned by the volunteer fire company.

Mr. Buroczi: The building is actually connected, but they own a certain part of it. They own the back half, the volunteers own that front part of it. It looks like an L-shape right?

Mr. Martin: Speaking of getting a legal opinion. Dave, you had said at one point a month or so ago, we had money budgeted for if we had to hire a lawyer to help us?

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, we were trying to keep some money for the local finance board applications to help walk it through. We did leave some money in the budget for that.

Mr. Martin: I don’t think we need it now, but I think we will…

Mr. Kenny: No, it might happen down the road.

Mr. Martin: Computers, we talked about. Anybody have a problem with the 76 number?

Mr. Mull: See we can’t see what you’re looking at Jeff. It’s tough for us.

Mr. Martin: That whole column where it says 2% increases. The first number is for rent. The second number is for computer maintenance. And I think we talked about there may be some initial startup costs to buy software and things like that.

Chief Kraemer: To get the entire fleet up and running on MVP status would be an in-house and be a link to CAD.

Mr. Martin: My guess is maintenance of computers, that’s probably a fair estimate.

Chief Kraemer: I would think so.

Mr. Martin: The next one was for EMS supplies; $17,500 is the current. That would probably be still good, I don’t know why that would change.

Chief Kramer: Well, it all depends. I mean, right now, the NARCAN, epinephrine and things like that, that price skyrocketed.

Mr. Mull: Doesn’t the Township get NARCAN for free?

Chief Kraemer: Well if they do, then it would be good if we did because…

Mr. Kenny: I’m not sure… initially it was free. I’d have to check whether the prosecutors office is still…

Chief Kramer: We’re paying $43 a dose and we’re giving out three a day. Between the NARCAN, Aspirin, EpiPen, hopefully they’ll make it a mandatory transport, the defibrillator pads that we use on a daily basis.

Mr. Martin: Do you guys charge for any of your EMS calls?

Chief Kraemer: It’s just paid through the tax dollars. Sometimes we try to take some stuff off the ambulance, bag of out bands for some stuff like we try to just…

Mr. Mull: We replace our equipment that’s used because the hospital is going to charge for it anyway. So if we bag somebody, and they use that bag on the ambulance, we take it back to them because the hospital is going to charge that person and then they get reimbursed.

Mr. Martin: Is that something potentially we could do?

Chief Kraemer: Bill for EMS?

Mr. Martin: Yeah.

Chief Kraemer: That would be a nightmare.

Mr. Kenny: That would be tough.

Mr. Mull: That would be tough unless you actually had EMS in the fire service as an ambulance, then you could bill that way.

Mr. Kenny: Because usually an ambulance is coming and then that’s how…

Mr. Mull: I mean you can bill for service but that’s just double taxing them at that point for that.

Mr. Martin: And an administrative headache probably too.

Mr. Mull: Unless you got EMS in the service. If you want to take it away from Robert Wood.

Mr. Martin: So we’ll leave that number for now then?

Mr. Mull: It’s a money generator. If anything, it’s going to be a little less.

Mr. Buroczi: Yeah, it will either be that or less.

Mr. Martin: We talked about the fire hydrant that’s the $1.4. This next one, it says fire prevention.

Chief Kraemer: That can come out.

Mr. Mull: What is that Chief?

Chief Kraemer: It’s fire prevention materials and things. But if the bureau is going to be stood up outside of what these budget numbers are, then…

Mr. Buroczi: It’s like for fire prevention week and helmets, poster contest, all that stuff.

Mr. Martin: The next one, the $63,000 is fire services contract. That $62,000 of that came from District 8. So District 8 paid that entire fire services contract?

Chief Kraemer: I’m guessing that could be a shared service agreement they have with District 7. And it also may incorporate part of the shared service agreement that they have with District 6 for the chief services.

Mr. Buroczi: No, that’s down here the $56,000 for Chiefs contract.

Chief Kraemer: Then that could just be fire prevention, I don’t know.

Mr. Buroczi: That could just be the fire prevention.

Chief Kraemer: I don’t know if I have their budget to figure it out. Fire prevention, training, fire services, and rent $137,000.

Mr. Mull: What is it called?

Mr. Martin: Fire services contract. I don’t know where he got the $62,000 number from. We could put a question mark next to it and I’ll shoot Joe an e-mail. It’s all coming from District 8 according to Joe’s… I will shoot him an email. The next is utilities at $186…

Chief Kraemer: I think we could see some improvement, but probably little. I mean a lot of that, the heaters and AC units, they’re aged. So there’s going to have to be an investment which I think a lot of that has been identified in the reports. Spend a little now and save a lot later.

Mr. Buroczi: That could be different too because the volunteers pay a different bill than the fire commissioners do. There’s two separate meters on buildings. There’s two separate cables, two separate PSE&G bills, two separate gas bills, two separate water bills.

Mr. Martin: Even with the repairs, at best, staying even.

Mr. Kenny: You’re not going to save much money there.

Mr. Martin: $413,000 - materials and supplies… hoses…

Chief Kraemer: That’s exactly what it is, it’s operational items.

Mr. Martin: Does that sound about right?

Chief Kraemer: It’s $107,000 in District 9 because they’re looking to replace a lot of the rescue stuff that’s gone out of date.

Mr. Kenny: So is that a one shot expense for this year though?

Chief Kraemer: It will be.

Mr. Kenny: So a big part of that $405,000 may go away?

Chief Kraemer: Correct.

Mr. Martin: I guess if somebody can maybe take a look at maybe the last year or two to see what we’re… Because I want to make sure we’re trying to get an average.

Mr. Kenny: For example, if it’s a one shot deal, it may be $150,000 less than that. Who knows.

Mr. Martin: But it might be District 2 three years ago that paid $105,000. So we’ll take a look at that and see if that one… So those numbers are probably all over the place then.

Mr. Mull: Well, that’s the other thing that’s going to be different too. We’re going to be able to control those costs.

Chief Kraemer: It’s all going to be streamlined.

Mr. Martin: District 7 is $138,000 and all the rest are most of the rest are $35,000 and under, so…

Chief Kraemer: A lot of it may be as far as who the accountant is and who’s plugging what into what line item. So what may look like it’s replacement of hose and things like that may actually be part of the repairs for a fire engine.

Mr. Martin: So we’ll try to see if we can get better numbers on that. Memberships- $5,900.

Mr. Mull: That’s commissioners. That number is going to go away. District 4 pays membership and dues. They join the commissioner’s association and things like that.

Chief Kraemer: Chief Antozzeski is in the International Fire Chiefs Association. Some of the inspectors licenses, if they’re required to have those they will reimburse the individual for having that license.

Mr. Martin: Okay.

Chief Kraemer: They will reimburse the individual for having that license.

Mr. Martin: So you think that number probably stays? It’s a small number anyway.

Chief Kraemer: It certainly isn’t going to be what it is.

Mr. Mull: They also pay themselves to go…the commissioners in District 4 and other districts pay themselves to go to Wildwood for the convention. That isn’t under their dues and… so you’re going to see a significant reduction on that.

Mr. Martin: The $620,000 is for repairs which we kind of already talked about a little bit.

Mr. Mull: Yeah, that’s lump summed between fire truck repair and building maintenance repair.

Mr. Martin: Oh really? Okay. So maybe then the hiring, like we talked about earlier plus some… You still have to go outside for some specialty things. That number may be about the same and include the hires the town has to do then potentially. Could that make sense?

Mr. Mull: You don’t think it will be reduced… the repairs?

Chief Kraemer: No, but I believe that the money will be re-allocated to something else. I’m following what you’re saying.

Mr. Martin: You’re not for lack of a better word taking it to Jiffy Lube, you’re going to take it to the town garage but it’s still a cost. And over the long hall, it’s probably going to be somewhat even.

Mr. Kenny: In the ballpark. You might save 5% or 10%.

Chief Kraemer: The town will pay about $72 per hour which are really good rates for mechanics. So think you take your car somewhere, you’re about $90 an hour.

Mr. Martin: Alright, so we’ll keep that one at the same, but I think that potentially then takes off Mr. Ricci’s numbers on the garage in buildings and grounds and we could just assume that into this repairs number then.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah.

Mr. Martin: $53,000 - paging and telephones.

Mr. Buroczi: Some of that money includes some districts have their own cell phones and stuff like that, cell phone service. Some of the trucks have their cell phone service in it for the computers right now. So some of that is included with that.

Mr. Mull: It seems like a lot of money.

Mr. Buroczi: It is a lot of money.

Mr. Martin: So that probably stays the same you think?

Mr. Buroczi: That will probably come down. I can’t see telephones costing that much money.

Chief Kraemer: District 6, is the only one that has the district issued cell phones. Everything else is just regular phone bills that they get. There’s nothing else there other than the internet that we pay for. The wireless cards for the trucks. Really there’s really nothing there anymore, not like it used to be.

Mr. Martin: So even though District 6 budgeted $10,000 for it, I can’t imagine it being sky high, right?

Chief Kraemer: No, I don’t think so.

Mr. Martin: So maybe a slight decrease there.

Mr. Mull: So that was going to be my thing. Each district now pays a company now pays a company to do a menu option. There’s no need for it.

Chief Kraemer: Actually, we don’t do that. We still answer the phone.

Mr. Mull: You’re probably the best ones. I think it’s a waste of money.

Chief Kraemer: I do too.

Mr. Mull: I don’t disagree with you.

Chief Kraemer: There are definitely savings there.

Mr. Buroczi: There’s eight phone lines in the firehouse and two different fax machines.

Mr. Martin: The next one is $15,000 for volunteer suppression services; $12,000 of that comes from District 2. Does anybody know what that is?

Mr. Mull: They bought a van, that could be it.

Chief Kraemer: I don’t know what the $3,000 is.

Mr. Mull: That’s what they pay the use to… they leave it in there.

Mr. Martin: Scott, do you know what the…

Mr. Goldsmith: I don’t know anything about a van.

Mr. Buroczi: The fire police have a response van that they use. They tried to do like a with the decline in the volunteers, they tried to do a Township-wide fire police response. If we have a big incident, they get the van, they get the fire police, and they get all the equipment together.

Mr. Mull: It should be zero.

Mr. Martin: If they bought it or if they’re leasing it…

Mr. Mull: No, it’s not even owned by them. It’s owned by the volunteer fire company. They just bought a bunch of equipment for it.

Mr. Martin: So that number will go away. But speaking on this, for things like volunteer equipment and things like that, is that just phased into the personal equipment line kind of thing?

Chief Kraemer: Really the big thing with us for equipment is like turnout gear. We’re into lease purchasing because it allows us to keep the cost down. Spread it out over the five years and we continue to go back into it because it keeps us compliant. We’re actually due for that stuff right now at the end of the year. We’re not sure whether or not, one, we’re going to be permitted to continue. Those are discussions we have to have. I know that may be transitional issues or does the town just want to by the turn out gear in one lump sum? Or other things like lease purchasing permissible within a municipal fire department?

Mr. Kenny: What’s the life expectancy for turnout gear?

Chief Kraemer: Ten years.

Mr. Kenny: It might be a capital expense then, which might be easier to do, and then pay it over ten years.

Chief Kraemer: Well, we pay it over five because it allows us to rotate. So every five years, we bring in new gear. This way the new stuff becomes your second set. And it does a couple things, one, it keeps us safer. It keeps us compliant and allows for us to after a bad fire, because all the cancer agents now that are in everything, it allows us to de convent the turnout gear. Otherwise, we you would drag a firefighter kicking and screaming.

Mr. Mull: Plus if you rip your pants on a run, it has to be sent out and you need replacement.

Mr. Mastrangelo: What’s the cost of the gear?

Chief Kraemer: Roughly, to outfit a firefighter, is about $3,000 - $3,500. We just met with the rep today.

Mr. Buroczi: That’s helmet, hood, coat, pants, boots, gloves.

Mr. Mull: Not the FCBA.

Chief Kraemer: That’s $8,000 by itself.

Mr. Martin: Scott, would there be any volunteer costs outside of the personal equipment type of stuff?

Mr. Goldsmith: No, not unless we went to the program, the response program like Hopewell does. What’s it called?

Chief Kraemer: The LOSAP?

Mr. Goldsmith: LOSAP. It’s like an incentive.

Mr. Martin: $85,000 for training?

Chief Kraemer: A lot of it is going to be in-house. There may be some specialty things we have to send people out for, but honestly, that’s a lot.

Mr. Martin: $326,000 water service. I assume that will stay about the same?

Mr. Kenny: That’s in addition to the fire hydrant.

Chief Kraemer: That’s a District 7 bill.

Mr. Mull: That could be in Aqua.

Mr. Martin: That could be Aqua because they don’t pay for the fire hydrant.

Mr. Mull: District 7 has half Aqua, half Trenton.

Mr. Martin: If you look on their budget, District 7 doesn’t have anything for fire hydrant. They just have it for…

Mr. Kenny: They might just be calling it water service.

Mr. Martin: I’m sure that’s what it is. So that would be the other line. Chief contract?

Chief Kraemer: That goes away.

Mr. Martin: Uniforms and personal equipment - $310,000?

Chief Kraemer: That is uniforms for the station and turnout gear. That includes career and volunteer. To be quite honest with you, if we did a lease purchase for us in order to spread that cost out for the career, because we know those numbers. And then we could put a budget number aside estimated for volunteer outfitting and gear. I think that would be a safer way and have some savings. So we don’t have a lot of extra gear laying around.

Mr. Martin: We’ll keep it as is for now. The other is all from District 4 - $17,941.

Mr. Kenny: That’s a pretty low miscellaneous number anyway.

Mr. Martin: Did I miss fuel on here?

Mr. Buroczi: That’s included with repairs. All the chief had here together. It also said fuel and repairs.

Mr. Mull: Fuel, all of it comes from the Township right now, so that will change.

Mr. Buroczi: So we would save some money there.

Mr. Martin: Not all of it?

Mr. Mull: Some of the districts go to BP.

Mr. Buroczi: District 9 goes to 130 to a gas station.

Mr. Mull: 7 & 2 go to BP.

Mr. Martin: Some.

Mr. Mull: Not a lot, I mean, they’re paying…

Mr. Martin: Most of them probably have shared services.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, most do.

Chief Kraemer: It’s give or take. It all depends on what the fuel cost is. It’s been as low as five and as much as one thousand.

Mr. Martin: Going to the debt service. So the $246,000 was principle debt, the $54,000 was interest on the debt. But then there’s this $196 number, and that all came from District 4.

Mr. Mull: That’s a fire truck payment between 3 and 4.

Mr. Buroczi: That will go away though, right?

Mr. Mull: No, that’s still the same. Well the payment is there for… District 4 does the payment for both 3 and 4.

Mr. Buroczi: So the four fire trucks…

Mr. Martin: That number will continue.

Chief Kraemer: The only other one that you’ll see will be the new pumper from District 6 which is a lease purchase. So I think total, you’re looking at $270,000 or something like that

Mr. Mull: That’s five brand new fire trucks.

Chief Kraemer: It’s part of a fleet maintenance plan uses a lease purchase.

Mr. Kenny: So you’re getting five brand new fire trucks Shane?

Mr. Mull: No, we already got four, and one’s coming in this year.

Mr. Kenny: Okay.

Mr. Mull: We got two trucks and three engines.

Mr. Martin: So that $196,000 number includes the principle on the debt payment for those trucks. Any expenses people didn’t see that we didn’t cover tonight? Anything got included somehow or… Fuel was the big one that I had a question on but we talked about that.

Chief Kraemer: We really don’t have a fleet plan at this time. You know how I am with trying to be efficient about that. So I don’t see any section in here that really shows any capital items set aside unless I’m missing…

Mr. Martin: Probably not because you couldn’t do capital with the districts.

Chief Kraemer: There were some that used to put certain moneys aside and call it capital. But I didn’t see any.

Mr. Buroczi: I guess it depends like you have fire prevention bureau saved up so… Depending on the manpower with chiefs and battalion chiefs, they have to have their own car.

Mr. Martin: Deputy chiefs need their own car too.

Mr. Buroczi: Deputy chiefs would need their own car. The chief will need his own car.

Mr. Mull: Not to take home though.

Mr. Martin: For the station.

Mr. Buroczi: For that shift.

Chief Kraemer: Kind of what we’ve gone to is, what I’m pushing for is the pickup truck model like what I got. The simple reason is when we decided that truck needs replacement, all the guts, everything in the back, it’s moved into the new unit so a lot of the up-fitting charges that we had before, we don’t have to deal with. If we replace a radio, but the pull out is all moved, the command box is moved. It’s more cost efficient.

Mr. Buroczi: And a lot of the reason I did it too is that if you come back from a working fire, the gear is in the back of that truck, it’s not inside the cab with him. So all the cancer and all that stuff, because we actually had a firefighter come to one of our conventions. When he was a little kid, he used to take his dad’s gear, put his gear on. Got on the job, at 26 years old, he ended up with testicular cancer because he kept putting his dad’s gear on. It wasn’t from his gear, just from all the years just playing around with his dad’s gear. It all attributed back to that. So that’s why a lot of the studies are coming out now that cancer is a big thing in the fire service and we’re trying to stop it. So a guy having a second set of gear, having two hoods, it looks like a lot, but it’s not. Because it’s saving a guy, it’s saving on medical bills and everything else, so saving a guy’s health.

Mr. Martin: Scott, do the volunteers own any trucks or… not just fire trucks, but what would be like a chief truck or anything compared to?

Chief Kraemer: The fire police van is owned by the volunteer fire company. Colonial’s van was purchased by the ladies’ auxiliary and donated to the fire district. But I don’t know where the ownership still lies.

Mr. Martin: But not many?

Mr. Buroczi: No, a few.

Chief Kraemer: A lot of what we see that’s still owned by the volunteer entities are like the antique units where there’s a concern as to where they’re going to go and how they’re going to be preserved. But again, that’s something else that we may have to deal with.

Mr. Martin: Scott, I think you said last week, there’s like 25 probably active volunteers. But there’s like 90 people on the books. Do we buy equipment for all 90 of them?

Mr. Goldsmith: No, those are 90 people that are listed on their roll call. It’s not actually active physical people who can go onto a fire truck.

Mr. Martin: Even now, we’re not buying equipment for people who are unlikely to use it?

Chief Kraemer: No. One of the things that we tried to do recently, tried it for years, but it’s become easiest to find is put an active volunteer list. And this way, you’re not outfitting everybody with turnout gear like we used to. Are you meeting your burns, are you doing the mandatory, so on and so forth. And then, as far as the training academies are concerned, I mean, we have a little bit of cost sending people up to Mercer County or to Middlesex or something like that. We potentially may still have to do that for a one-on-one basis, bBut the training division will be able to set up a six- month schedule where you know this is going to be the volunteer academy and in another six - months, maybe it’s the career side or it’s a combination of them.

Mr. Martin: I saw in here the surplus number equating to about a $1,000,000. Does that lessen than the unrestricted funds that we are expecting to have?

Mr. Mull: The number is actually off because there’s a couple districts he didn’t have in there. So, that number is going to be higher.

Mr. Martin: That 1080 number? You think it will be higher?

Mr. Mull: It will be higher. District 3 has money that’s not in there; 2 has money, 7 doesn’t.

Mr. Martin: 2, 4, 7, didn’t have anything that was surplus.

Chief Kraemer: 4 doesn’t have any money.

Mr. Martin: Okay, so that’s a zero.

Chief Kraemer: There’s like $5,000 left after this year. The other ones, a lot of what you’re going to see is you’re going to have to look at the audits from the previous year to actually determine what that solid number is and then figure out what had to be used for this year’s budget.

Mr. Buroczi: Do you plan on like doing a forensic audit on the districts at all since you’re taking over the monies?

Mr. Kenny: I would doubt we would do a forensic audit. You guys get audited every year. There’s no reason to think something’s inappropriate that’s gone on.

Mr. Martin: I would feel the same way.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, there’s no suspicion there, so why would we spend the time and money doing that. Whatever it’s going to be at the end of the year, assuming we’re going to try and transition in

2019. At midnight, everything becomes the Township’s. I guess we’re going to have to check with some of these districts that are owned by the volunteer fire companies, about the real estate, not the district to what their intention is, what they want to try to do with it. Colonial sounds like a real interesting one to me what’s going to happen there. But my view would be, why would the Township pour a whole bunch of money into a place that we don’t own. We’ve got to see what the term of the lease is too.

Mr. Mull: A lot of those are like 99 years.

Mr. Buroczi: … be broken, right?

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, if it doesn’t exist anymore.

Chief Kraemer: At that point, charters don’t exist?

Mr. Martin: The one other thing that I wanted to talk about tonight, and we’ll save like the manpower and all that for later, is creating the department early. I really like that idea the more I thought about it. In theory maybe we do an ordinance in April, the Mayor picks somebody over the summer after she considers things, we would get like the chief, and one or two other people to be here. I say here, meaning in the Township to do an intergovernmental transfer later, to start setting up the rules and procedures and all that kind of almost regulatory stuff that they have to have to start. Contracts need to be entered into early on for software and scheduling. That’s something I like the idea of. I know the chief brought it up. I don’t know if anybody else thought about it?

Mr. Mull: Totally agree with it.

Chief Kraemer: Turnout gear is a big deal for us. Like you said, we need to move forward with that, and that would be an agreement that… What we basically do is when we sat in on it today is we come up with one spec, and we bid it as a total package to get a better interest rate for the package. That would strain my map process.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, you would just have an agreement with all the districts to do it.

Chief Kraemer: Exactly.

Mr. Kenny: You’d have to do it through the districts this year.

Mr. Buroczi: Next year you’d be able to refinance that and streamline that even more. But it’s done through the districts this year and then next year get a different interest rate.

Mr. Kenny: Do you replace a certain percentage every year of the turnout gear?

Mr. Mull: No, every five years.

Mr. Kenny: Every five years 100%, and you keep the old stuff as your backup. I guess we’d have to take a look how we do it within this year’s budget for the Township.

Mr. Martin: I don’t know whether we could take some unrestricted funds?

Mr. Kenny: We could have the districts pay that.

Mr. Martin: Because the districts are going to save money… Let’s say we hire a new chief. Say we hire John Smith who currently is a chief at one of the districts. The Mayor selected him to be the chief of the department. That district is going to save… they drop off the payroll once they’re hired by the Township. And so I wonder if we could some type of intergovernmental transfer to help...

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, that we’re hiring a chief and then they pay for the chief. That may be the way to…

Mr. Martin: And maybe it’s just a transfer to the Township of the money. But that’s one way I thought of where the town doesn’t incur… we’re not hiring any additional people because you’d want the chief, you’d want a captain or you know what I mean?

Mr. Mull: You’d take this contract over and stuff like that, right?

Mr. Martin: So we’d have to talk to Civil Service to make sure like Joe was saying they stay tier 1 employees or whatever.

Mr. Mull: That’s the best part of intergovernmental to be honest with you is the employee safety. It’s an easy transition.

Mr. Martin: But if Council did it in April or early May at the latest, you give the Mayor 2 or 3 months to figure out who she wants to hire.

Mr. Kenny: Our budget wouldn’t be adopted by April so we could amend the budget. Because we’d have to amend it even if there’s a wash. If they’re going to pay us x, we’re going to spend x.

Mr. Martin: But it also gives the Mayor time to figure out who she wants to select and then give that person 3, 4, 5 months whatever to start in theory getting that department ready to be stood up, so that at midnight or 12:01, on the 1st hopefully, you already have the scheduling there, you have the chief who set the work schedule and all that.

Mr. Buroczi: At that point too, we could petition for PERC to have union representation to start contract negotiations early also before the end of the year. So this way, it’s all set in place.

Chief Kraemer: What about the transitional aid?

Mr. Martin: I don’t think that would prevent us from asking the governor for transitional aid, right?

Mr. Kenny: The state is more broke than anybody.

Mr. Martin: I guess we’ll find out how broke next week. I’m asking the senator and the two assembly guys especially for transitional aidm but even Anthony working fort the new treasurer I don’t know how much that’s going to help us. So I’d like to think we’re going to get a decent amount of money, but I don’t even know. What we submit to DCA… I guess we can list things as helping us with transitional aid and that could be one of the things that maybe we help force and say that we stood this department up early, and we paid $250,000 over six months or whatever it is.

Chief Kraemer: We definitely need a MOU or a shared service agreement with the districts and the municipality so that they respect and understand that the chief is the chief of the department moving forward. That’s going to be critical.

Mr. Martin: Say this again.

Chief Kraemer: You’re going to need an MOU or a shared service agreement because you’re going to have districts that are still going to be independent of the municipal fire department. And when you stand it up, when you’re selecting a chief to spearhead and move everything forward, that shared service agreement is buying from the districts saying yeah, we support that and we’re going to move forward.

Mr. Kenny: Do you think you might get some blowback from some of the districts?

Chief Kraemer: I don’t believe so, but…

Mr. Kenny: But I agree with you, that they have to say that we’re going to submit to this.

Mr. Kenny: He’s concerned what would make a guy a chief. And one of the districts says we’re not paying attention to him.

Chief Kraemer: That’s part of the shared service agreement that we have now to provide for the public.

Mr. Kenny: He’s not our chief, we’re still a district.

Chief Kraemer: We have an MOU in place that says that regardless, I can move trucks, I can do what I need to do with your personnel and relocate them.

Mr. Martin: And that would be for the period from July through the interim period.

Mr. Mull: It’s already in place now, they could copy and paste what we have now as long as they all agree.

Chief Kraemer: But it’s just important.

Mr. Martin: I’m going to bring it up tomorrow as one of the things for the other Council people to consider. I know I included it in my e-mail, but let the Mayor obviously know too that I hope for Council to go along. I would think so too. Like I said, the ordinance wouldn’t be until April, probably second reading end of April, beginning of May. You give the Mayor 3, 4 months to figure out who she wants. Three months to get it to us, a month for us to approve it, and then you stood up with plenty of time for somebody to do… two, three people to do what they need to do to get the department ready to develop. So if there was nothing else, I know it’s after 8:00 already. The manpower stuff, I think I want to go back and look at some of these numbers we talked about, and figure out how that would affect some of the other budget things. Send some of these other ones we talked about with Joe like adding personnel, adding the secretary, some of those things as well. And then maybe in two weeks, we can start talking about the manpower numbers once we have a more

accurate spreadsheet I think has better numbers. Anybody have anything else they want to bring up tonight, either talk about or just say hey in two to four weeks, let’s start talking about these types of things?

Mr. Mull: I think once we figure out those other fire houses, and the manpower, where we’re going to put the manpower and fire trucks, that’s the big issue.

Mr. Kenny: We’ve got to see which fire houses are in play or if some of them are going to be out of play.

Mr. Buroczi: Maybe the property records and maybe Lindsay can look into…

Mr. Kenny: We can try to find out from Colonial what the story there is. But I remember that was one of the biggest numbers potentially for repairs.

Mr. Buroczi: I don’t doubt that without even looking at it.

Mr. Kenny: Yeah, I was just thinking off the top of my head I remember that number blew me away.

Mr. Buroczi: They really haven’t done any renovations there at all. I know at one point, the ladies wanted to put an A-frame roof on that building, but that never transpired. But the roof is so bad.

Mr. Martin: Colonial is the one that’s owned by the gun club or whatever?

Mr. Kenny: Yeah.

Mr. Martin: Do we have like a president there or somebody we could talk to find even if they will rent that facility to the town. I’m not trying to bind the town to anything, but I at least want to know whether they’re open to keeping this…

Mr. Kenny: Yes, we want to know what it would cost and that’s why I said we got to look at the cost of improvements.

Mr. Goldsmith: One of the questions for Rusling itself was, we don’t own it, but if the town owns it, would we draw up a lease agreement with the town when we hold our meetings or would we

Mr. Kenny: You mean if it becomes a Township facility?

Mr. Goldsmith: Yeah.

Mr. Kenny: We’ve always allowed meetings in certain public buildings. So I don’t think that would be a big issue down the road, if somebody needs a meeting spot for occasions.

Mr. Martin: Any other things people want to talk about tonight? Alright, I’ll send some of the stuff to Joe, he’s very on top of all this, and I think he loves it. So my guess is we get this back from him by the end of the week. And then, I’ll try to send out a summary of some of the things we talked about tonight.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:05 p.m.

______Eileen Gore, RMC, CMC, MMC Municipal Clerk