BOT to Explore Feasibility of Combination Fire Dept.

In a discussion at their Monday night meeting, the South Orange Trustees agreed to proceed with an exploration of whether establishing a combination fire department—in which volunteers would be trained to work alongside career firefighters—would be feasible.

Trustee Michael Goldberg, who chairs the public safety committee, presented research gleaned from public data for fire departments across the state. Of Essex County's 22 municipalities, roughly half have all paid fire departments, while the other half are staffed entirely by volunteers, he said. (Millburn and Bloomfield have combination fire departments.) The towns with the highest effective tax rates are those with career fire departments.

"This is not about eliminating the fire department," said Goldberg, noting that training volunteers is a possible way of providing the department with frequently asked-for additional resources. (The fire department is currently down to 33 paid firefighters.)

When asked to share his thoughts, Chief Jeffrey Markey stepped up to the podium and observed that researching combination fire departments was "a worthy effort." However, he observed that volunteerism is waning across the state now that two-income families are the norm, and the recruitment model of volunteers who also live and work in town doesn't hold for South Orange. "I'm a little skeptical based on my 35 years of experience ... that we will be successful," he said.

He also expressed concern about the time and money that could potentially be invested to train volunteers and asked the Trustees to weigh that against the likelihood of success. "Every day with my budget in the firehouse, I look at nickels at this point," Markey said.

Goldberg was hopeful that more detailed research would be ready to be presented to the full Board in the first half of 2010. Among the questions to be explored is how to go about marketing and recruiting volunteers and what the staffing policies should be—i.e., would volunteers be on site at the firehouse or on call with a pager.