Fire Department Merger Talks Between Maplewood and South Orange Unsuccessful, Say Mayors
Discussions to merge fire departments end after a year and a half.
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.”
Douglas Newman
9:28 am on Wednesday, December 7, 2011
While I have the utmost respect for Mayor DeLuca and the Maplewood Township Committee, I respectfully disagree with his summarization of our consolidated fire service discussions during my tenure as Village President. Maplewood initially proposed assuming responsibility for operating a consolidated fire department, based on its current operating model, but South Orange raised significant concerns that both towns first agree on instituting best practices with respect to the questions articulated by Village President Torpey – an approach that Millburn and Summit are taking. As discussions evolved, South Orange also expressed interest in assuming responsibility for operating a consolidated fire department, but Mayor DeLuca countered that Maplewood had no interest in considering this scenario or frankly reconsidering its current practices if it assumed responsibility.
Thoughtfully merging small, adjacent career-service fire departments is an obvious way to leverage consolidated expertise, staffing, training, coverage, facilities, and equipment – especially with so much pressure on municipal budgets and obvious taxpayer concerns about today and the future.
Richard Crossin
10:37 am on Wednesday, December 7, 2011
What a shame. Talks seem to have broken down over who was going to be "boss". If the parties involved were less interested in protecting their petty fiefs and more interested in serving the community, this would not have happened.
Consolidation also might have meant cutting staff. And as a wise man once said, "It's impossible to convince someone whose salary depends on believing something else."
I'd like to thank Doug Newman for his years of service.
Victor De Luca
3:52 pm on Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Part I
I too respect Doug Newman’s work during his tenure as Village President. We worked together to craft an agreement that resulted in the creation of one of the state’s largest non-urban shared municipal court and violations bureau. It was this success that raised our hopes for creating a merged fire department, although we recognized the degree of complications associated with fire services.
From our early discussions there was a tacit understanding that Maplewood would be the lead agency. In fact, concept papers that I prepared and we used to advance our discussions consistently had Maplewood as the lead agency. Below are a couple of sections from the November 2010 concept paper:
Goals
1)To provide the highest quality fire services to the residents of Maplewood and South Orange
2)To maintain an appropriate level of firefighting personnel to adequately respond to fire, emergency and hazardous incidences in Maplewood and South Orange
3)To achieve economic and operational efficiencies
Service
1)The Township of Maplewood will provide fire services to the Village of South Orange through an inter-local agreement.
2)The name of the merged fire department shall be the Maplewood/South Orange Fire Department.
Victor De Luca
4:17 pm on Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Part II
Doug is correct that initially Maplewood wanted to provide services to South Orange utilizing its current “Standard Operating Procedures.” South Orange balked and said they preferred to discuss a merged department that would adopt best practices from the two departments. After some discussion, there was an agreement to have the two fire chiefs write up a description and justification for the practices used by his department. The reports were written and on July 27, 2011 (after Doug left office) a meeting was held with the chiefs and each town’s governing body members. So I respectfully disagree with Doug that Maplewood was not interested in discussing best practices. Until the end, we were ready to look at what would work best and see how that could be incorporated in the agreement.
I am disappointed that the talks with South Orange did not succeed. Maplewood will continue to pursue a shared agreement on fire services with other towns along its border.
Howard Levison
4:20 pm on Wednesday, December 7, 2011
As an active participant in these discussions I can attest that the major issues were differences on how the departments operate. In my opinion, we were first seeking to provide through determination of a "best practices " model that included how Inspections, EMT services and dispatch are provided.
If we were to agree on a best practice solution we would then need to tackle the more difficult quantification of a cost model that includes how to allocate capital assests and an understanding on how to model the best location for housing the fire services.
We could not come to an agreement on the basic differences. The two towns continue to work together in through Mutual Aid commitments as always.
Richard Crossin
1:27 pm on Friday, December 9, 2011
In light of the shared mission of both departments, it beggars belief that the respective departments' "best practices" were so at odds that no compromise could be found. SO/MA taxpayers can only hope that people of good will can continue shared services talks with more satisfactory results. My thanks go to alll who participated in this first effort.