For Montclair Slate Releases Positions on Police/Fire

The For Montclair slate headed by mayoral candidate Harvey Susswein—and including Tim Barr, Bill Hurlock, Jeff Jacobson, and Walter Springer—continued to roll out position statements on Wednesday, releasing their stances on the police and fire departments.

In short, the slate—mindful of the township's finances—will take a look at whether all supervisory, command and administrative personnel are needed at the police department. When it comes to the fire department, the slate also noted that the renewed Glen Ridge fire contract was a bad deal for Montclair. Candidates say it has left Montclair residents paying at least three times as much for fire service, per residence, than Glen Ridge residents.

Here are the position statements in their entirety below:

Police Department: The safety and security of Montclair’s residents and visitors is at the top of For Montclair’s agenda. We are not considering further cuts to patrol personnel. Because staffing a 24×7 agency means only about one of every five patrol officers on the payroll is on the street during any shift, our current force of roughly 75 patrol officers is barely adequate. But although patrol strength will not be cut on our watch, the Police Department overall will not be exempted from budget scrutiny. We will take a close look at whether all supervisory, command and administrative personnel are needed.

We’re not running to micromanage Police Department operations. Chief David Sabagh is recognized as one of the best leaders in New Jersey. We’re lucky to have him, and we trust him to deploy his patrol personnel in the way that best serves Montclair. We will, however, exercise our oversight to ensure that the police give appropriate attention to all of Montclair’s Wards, recognizing that each Ward has unique issues and needs. We also want to give the department the resources it needs to implement more community-based policing.

We would like to be able to offer the services of our highly professional police department to neighboring towns, but we recognize that our neighbors want to keep their own Police Departments, as Montclair does. Full regionalization in this area therefore may not be possible without additional incentives and guidance from the State. We will, however, explore whether certain services, like police dispatch (for which Montclair has a state-of-the-art facility), can be shared with other towns in ways that benefit all sides.

We’re also committed to getting our officers home safely at the end of their shifts. Recently, Chief Sabagh informed the Council that interference from two television stations has made our police officers’ radios unreliable and potentially puts our officers in jeopardy. The current Council has not solved this problem, but we make this commitment to our police officers: By the end of our first year in office, we will ensure that our Township Manager has fixed it.

Fire Department: Montclair residents hope never to need the Fire Department, but we all are extremely grateful to have our professional firefighters ready to protect our families and our homes. We honor our brave firefighters and their service. Because Montclair is six miles long, we have three fire stations in order to minimize emergency response time. That is the right number and, absent regionalization of the service that would allow homes on the edges of Montclair to be reached more quickly by firefighters in neighboring towns, For Montclair opposes closing any of our fire stations. We also will listen carefully to our fire chief’s recommendations for the equipment our firefighters need to save victims’ lives as well as their own.

The renewed Glen Ridge fire contract, however, was a bad deal for Montclair. It has left Montclair residents paying at least three times as much for fire service, per residence, than Glen Ridge residents. Some say the deal the current Council cut is better than no deal at all, because we otherwise would have had to lay off firefighters, but that’s a false choice. The Glen Ridge contract has an exit clause. During our term in office, we will work with Glen Ridge, Bloomfield, West Orange and other neighboring municipalities to strike a better deal for Montclair. And as we will do with the Police Department, we will carefully scrutinize the Fire Department budget. Both our uniformed services have a relatively high percentage of supervisory, command and administrative personnel, not all of whom may be necessary.