Fire Subcommittee Meeting of February 26
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AGENDA HAMILTON TOWNSHIP FIE CONSOLIDATION SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING FEBRUARY 26, 2018 6:30 PM DISCUSSION Ordinance Items – Budget, Manpower, Effective Date, et cetera Current Budget Current Manpower (Districts 2 through 9) ASSIGNMENTS Budget increase for town inother departments (both S&W and OE; Maintenance; Personnel; Purchasing, etc.) Budget for New Municpal Fire Department (S&W, OE, Health Benefits) Manpower for New Municipal Fire Department Volunteer Plan of Action Wrap-up Costs i.e. Sick Time Payout, Building Repair Costs, etc. (DistrictS 2 through 9) Start-up Costs of New Jersey Department Building/Equipment Plan for New Department (new leases) All other Research Areas ADJOURNMENT 1 MINUTES HAMILTON TOWNSHIP FIRE SUBCOMMITTEE February 26, 2018 6:30 p.m. Mr. Martin: Thank you everybody for coming tonight and for agreeing to volunteer for the subcommittee that the town Council put together to research and draft an ordinance for the fire consolidation. Obviously, this will be a lengthy process in terms of its not going to be one or two meetings. But I think it will be very good for all of us, the residents of the town, and for the people who both are career firefighters and volunteer firefighters. So I just want to first of all thank you. What I envision tonight’s meeting to be is more of a brainstorming session to flush out the issues that we’re going to need to address, flush out the items that will be in the ordinance or we may even have to do multiple ordinances to amend other parts of the Township Code. And try to get all that flushed out now so we’re not taking time later on to the extent we need certain people here to research other things. Some of you may be our experts in certain things. For example, Joe (Monzo) is volunteering and he’s going to be kind of our numbers guy, finance guy. Obviously, we got volunteer representation, career representation, chief’s representation, the administration, and Ralph and I are here representing the residents from that end. I think this is a good group to really put this together and figure it out right from the beginning so we don’t have to go and address it multiple times. So really, like I said, from my view point, we’re going to be just kind of let’s brainstorm, let’s think of everything we can now. Let’s start talking I think a little bit on manpower numbers and budgetary numbers because I think those two items will really drive the remainder of the train. Once we have those numbers, those are your big spend numbers for the budget. So once we know what the budget is and what the manpower number is, everything else will kind of fall into place. Mr. Monzo: Since I’m a late comer to this, this isn’t happening until ‘19, is that correct? Mr. Martin: Well, it all depends. I anticipate it’s going to take us ninety of one hundred twenty days to draft the ordinance. Then it’s going to have to go up to Council. Then Council… my guess is Anthony is going to have one or two public hearings on it to figure out, give the public an opportunity to voice their approval or disapproval and suggestions, what have you. From that point, once Council has a good idea of what we want to do after the public input, my understanding is then it’s got to go up to New Jersey DCA Local Finance Board. Mr. Kenny: I think you’re right Jeff, 2019 will probably be the target. Mr. Martin: I can’t imagine we get any earlier than January 1, 2019. And the Local Finance Board, looks like they’ve got a brand new commissioner now. They’re going to have brand new people potentially in their different departments who are going to be swamped up to their heads and this might not be the first thing on their list, especially because we’re going to be giving it to them right around the time the budget is going to go for the towns as well. Mr. Monzo: They have the budgets now. The Local Finance Board doesn’t have anything to do with the budgets. I don’t think everybody here knows who I am, my background. I’m the Chief Financial Officer right now in South Brunswick, Mansfield, and Rocky Hill. I was actually the Director of Local Government for a year. So I was the Chairman of the Finance Board for that period of time. They do very little with municipal budgets. It’s all done by the regulatory staff which is separate from the Local Finance Board staff. They may have some stuff to do for some finances for some bigger towns. By the time you get this to them, they’ll be through the budget process. Mr. Martin: My goal is if we can get at midnight on January 1, it switches over, that would be ideal. But a lot of it is going to be out of our control whether that happens. So I don’t think actually everybody does know each other. I know most of us know each other. But just quickly then, just for at least Joe’s sake, get to know all of us. The following individuals were introduced: Rich Kraemer, Fire Chief Joe Monzo, Chief Financial Officer Shane Mull, President of FMBA Scott Goldsmith, Volunteers Rep. Ralph Mastrangelo, Councilmember Jeff Martin, Council Vice-President Eileen Gore, Municipal Clerk Dave Kenny, Township Business Administrator Nick Buroczi, President of the Fire Officers 2 Mr. Martin: So with that, Chief, I’m kind of going to turn things over to you as the subject matter expert in some of this. But what I first want to do is kind of flush out some of the issues you see. Besides manpower numbers and besides work chart and budget, we’ll get to those separately. But just some of the things… some of the issues we see that need to be addressed as we put the ordinance together. Chief Kraemer: The big one is going to be buildings…when we build the firehouses. Most of these split, as you guys know, parts are owned by the districts, parts owned by the volunteers, and some are split ownership between the districts. So are we truly going to have the number of houses that we do now…that we’re looking to staff or are we going to be consolidated in the number of firehouses that we’re actually going to be operating out of because we can’t come to an agreement with volunteering. So that’s a big one. It doesn’t change the staffing level, it just changes the equipment. Mr. Kenny: I think we have three (volunteer) houses; Nottingham, Colonial, and Whitehorse. The others are owned by districts and they automatically become Township. Chief Kraemer: Fifteen is partial…it’s a split ownership. Mr. Kenny: DeCou…I think that may be a legal question. Even the volunteer ones may become Township property upon dissolution. Chief Kraemer: My opinion is they would, but I’ve been a minority on that opinion. I’ve made some friends with that opinion. Mr. Kenny: There’s only one case out there on it and that specifically said the district ones. And all the assets of the volunteer association will become ours. Those are district owned houses there. Because the statute says any money they have becomes the Township’s upon dissolution. The court interpreted it saying all the assets become the Township’s, so it’s a little grayer area on the ones that are volunteer. Mr. Buroczi: Does it matter if the money from the district…that rent went to pay the mortgage of the fire department? Mr. Kenny: That’s an argument that the taxpayers would tend to own it then. So I don’t know, we’ll have to talk to some of them, and there will be resistance from them. You’re right, that would shape which houses we think we would operate out of. Mr. Buroczi: I know there was an OPRA something out there with OPRA…they wanted to OPRA the volunteer fire company minutes. The volunteer fire company denied it and they took it to court. And they said because you pay the rent with taxpayer dollars, you have to give them the minutes. Chief Kraemer: That would definitely change the charters. The charters are geared to provide fire protection to that district and if there’s no more district, there’s no more chart. So now it becomes a social club. Because I’ve heard a couple stations, I think they were going to be able to staff up a fire engine and staff up a company, and that’s not going to happen. I tried explaining that to them…but that’s one concern. Mr. Mastrangelo: One of the concerns I have is the response time as we were saying before. About having something located closer to the hospital, which we discussed the land on Estates Boulevard possibly putting something small there. And maybe shutting down Nottingham, and possibly go… I mean, this is all things that…. Mr. Martin: Is that something we can put in the ordinance…how many firehouses and where they’re located? Or something to just leave up to the chief and the administration to decide subsequent to? Mr. Kenny: Well, I think in terms of what we’re going to do, it may not have to go in the ordinance, but it will all be part of the plan that we have.