Fire Department Merger Talks Between Maplewood and South Orange Unsuccessful, Say Mayors

Maplewood and South Orange will not be merging fire departments.

Maplewood Mayor Vic DeLuca made the announcement at the end of the Dec. 6 Maplewood Township Committee meeting. DeLuca said that, after a year and a half, talks for merging the two fire departments were "unsuccessful" and he said there was "no need to have further conversations" because the leadership of the two towns "see things differently."

After the Township Committee meeting, DeLuca said that talks had made progress under the leadership of former South Orange Village President Doug Newman, but that new President Alex Torpey had introduced changes to the discussion. DeLuca specified that, previously, concept papers had come out of discussions positioning Maplewood as taking on management of a merged fire department. This was a subject of contention with Torpey, according to DeLuca.

According to Torpey, prior to his administration, South Orange had questions about a number of issues, including how Emergency Medical Services are provided, how dispatching is done, how building inspections are performed and a number of other best practices. In Torpey's accounting, best practices seemed to be an impasse between the two towns. 

“As much as South Orange wanted to work out sharing this service, the proposal from Maplewood, with them unquestionably being the lead agency without consideration of best practices, neither generated taxpayer savings nor provided better fire protection for South Orange residents,” Torpey told Patch on Tuesday evening. “Instead of rushing into this with the solution picked out before the research is done, South Orange proposed studying best practices and crafting a merged department using those best practices, a proposal which Maplewood declined, leaving us where we are now.”

Torpey brought up the possibility of a more regionalized service, something which he said DeLuca declined.

“We believe the biggest cost savings will come with regional or county-wide collaboration and South Orange will continue having those discussions,” said Torpey.

During the Maplewood Township Committee meeting, DeLuca said that Maplewood would still pursue opportunities to merge its fire department. "We will enter into discussions with other municipalities," said DeLuca. "We will continue on that path."

Despite the towns not joining on this venture, Torpey doesn’t see future shared service opportunities being jeopardized.

“This decision not to pursue a merged fire department will not jeopardize the close mutual aid relationship currently between the two departments,” said Torpey. “Both towns are still looking into various other shared services opportunities.”