It has been my way over the years to share the lessons I have learned in the living of my life and in my fire service career with you. Actually many of these lessons have come from mistakes that I made; either mistakes of commission or mistakes of omission. Currently I am embroiled in a situation here in my township which threatens the future of how each of our five fire departments performs their duties and provides fire and rescue services to the citizens of our community. I am working hard not to make any mistakes in this situation, because it is so personal for my fire company buddies and me.
My friends, this is a commentary that has been rumbling around in my mind for a number of weeks now. I am involved in a situation which has the potential to change how we here in my local fire company do business in our community. Forces are arrayed against us which run counter to how we operate our five individual fire companies in the township. People who have no real idea about the delivery of fire protection and rescue services are telling us that we are not doing our job properly.
This has been a tough few weeks. I personally have been fighting the urge to go to battle with the people who want us to do things their way. Those of you who have known me for a long time might find it hard to understand why I do not want to adopt a "kick-ass" approach to handling this situation. I would suggest that we are facing a "my way or the highway" approach to operating on a township-wide basis. We are being threatened and I have been working hard to decide how I will respond to this situation.
Let me suggest that our national government’s failure to operate in a logical manner has had an impact upon my thinking. Like many of you, I have been critical of the way that our leaders in Washington cannot seem to agree on anything. It is all about confrontation. Compromise is seen as weakness. We are seeing the Democrats against the Republicans, which is the normal battle. However, we now see the Republican Party coming apart at the seams; in a right wing versus middle-of-the-road battle. On the other side we see the Left-Wing Democrats battling the plain old liberal version of Democrats. In the midst of these battles, our nation’s government has seemingly come to halt, hindered by a series of roadblocks which stymy doing the business of government.
How can I be critical of the manner in which they are doing their jobs and then go about doing battle with the people here in my community? That would probably be a very hypocritical thing to do on my part. I have tried to assess what the other side wishes to accomplish. They keep telling us that we need to change, but when pressed for details, they continually tell us to work it out at our level. They want us to shoot arrows at a target without telling us where there target is located. They want us to use a roadmap without a starting point or a destination. Me thinks that this the right way to go.
After a great deal of thinking, pondering, and worrying, I have decided that the time has come to see if I can arrange a meeting with the players on the other side. It is my intention to ask them how I can be of assistance. It is my intention to ask them what they wish to see happen in this situation. It is also my intention to work towards identifying their end game; the things they wish to see change. As is also my way, I have bounced all of my thoughts off of my personal lawyer, a friend of 54 years standing. He agrees with my plan to offer compromise rather than confrontation.
It is my intention to labor in an open and above-board manner. I am not sure that the other folks will see what it is that I wish to accomplish. It might be that there are areas of mutual concern where we can come together. If this is the case, we should move forward jointly. My fire district is coming together with another of the districts in town to apply for a joint federal grant to fund updating our self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) inventory to meet the latest NFPA standards.
However, one of the aspects which causes me a great deal of concern is that the tax rate in one of our five fire districts is far higher than that of the other four. It is a matter of the value of the properties in each fire district. In the district with the highest tax rate, the bulk of the land mass is either farms, state-own park land, or widely disperse single family dwellings. As I have often stated, you cannot tax deer, horses and bunny rabbits. It seems as though the people who wish to see changes want the other four districts to pay some of the freight for the problem area.
My preliminary read on the situation is that the local government leaders want the four other fire districts to raise the taxes on our residents to cover the problems in the fifth district. Sorry gang. This does not seem fair to me, as my fire district has lowered our budget by more than $600,000 over the past decade. We take our fiduciary responsibilities to the citizens very seriously. We paid off our new fire station with a 10-year bond, rather than a 20- or 30-year note. We paid cash for our last two pumpers, saving more than $30,000. We also have a new rescue-pumper on order for which we paid cash. By paying cash we saved an amount of money that is greater than the amount of interest we could make on our bank investments in a five-year period.
It is my belief that our approach to running our fire district has led to a more fiscally-sensible set of policies. However, despite all of our efforts we are still receiving criticism. There are those who say that we should use our surplus to lower the tax rate and then borrow money for what we need. That makes no sense to me. Think about that for a moment. We are not making much in the way of interest from the bank where our funds are on deposit. However, it is still better than having to paying a five to six percent interest rate on any money we might borrow or bond. But even the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs wants us to lower our surplus and start borrowing money for our needs. That is sheer madness.
Recently it came to my attention that my fire district has the highest level of tax ratables in the township. This surprised me, as I thought that the southern end of the township had a higher rate of commercial and mercantile properties. In light of that my district is better able to spread the cost of doing business over all of the ratables in our segment of the community. But then again, how is it fair for those citizens who elected me to office to have to shoulder an added financial burden for another part of town?
However, rather than get into a battle with the people in government, it is my intention to approach them in a spirit of compromise rather than confrontation. It is my intention to step forward and offer my assistance to the township government. It is my intention to offer my 51 years’ experience to guide things to a successful conclusion. It is my intention to offer my 35-plus years of municipal fire risk consulting experience to guide the local government in their deliberations.
There are those who say that we have too much fire equipment and apparatus. Let me refer these folks to the professional literature, as well as the Insurance Services Office (ISO) rating schedule. These folks seem to think that cuts can be made across the board without any negative consequences. I wonder how our commercial and mercantile taxpayers would feel about seeing their insurance rates rise.
It is my intention to move forward in this manner. It is my intention to attempt to work in a cooperative manner. It is my intention to see if I can ascertain the endgame which the other side wants to see. Rest assured my friends that I will work to keep the best interests of the taxpayers who have elected me to serve as a fire commissioner uppermost in my mind’s eye.
Rest assured that I will move forward in an honest and straightforward manner. I shall let you know how all of this works out. Remember, you cannot hide from problems. You ignore them at your own peril because they only get worse if you avoid them. Take care and stay safe. Sometimes you just have to say ‘what the heck.’
