Monroe mulls merge of its 3 fire districts

Residents have long

complained about

disparity in fire taxes

BY SETH MANDEL

Staff Writer

A committee has been formed to study the possibility of consolidating Monroe's three fire districts.

The districts, two of which are staffed mostly by paid, full-time firefighters, have a significant disparity in property tax rates, said Township Business Administrator Wayne Hamilton.

District 2 has the cheapest tax rate, at 15 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, while District 1 has a rate of 19 cents and District 3 has the highest at 25 cents.

The difference means the owner of a home assessed at $200,000 pays $300 annually for fire taxes in District 2, while the owner of property of the same value in District 3 shells out $500.

In District No. 1, fire taxes are $380 on that home.

"The problem is, you can't have somebody on one side of the street pay $200 more a year for the same service that the neighbor across the street has," Hamilton said.

And that recurring complaint from residents has prompted Mayor Richard Pucci to appoint the Consolidation Study Committee.

Hamilton and Township Council President Gerald Tamburro will head the committee, which will also include Councilman Irwin Nalitt, Fire District No. 1 Commissioners Charlie DiPierro and Ray Perry, District No. 2 Commissioners Glenn Borsuk and Martin Berkowitz, District No. 3 Commissioners Peter Lumia and Len Levene, six fire officials, and IAFF Local 3170 union representative Les Barta.

The panel has already formed three subcommittees to study the various areas of interest - legal, financial and operational considerations.

Tamburro and Hamilton will serve on the finance subcommittee.

"If this is being driven by the tax rate, we have to see how, by consolidating, the tax rates will be changed into one tax rate," Tamburro said of the finance subcommittee's responsibility. "It may be that one or two districts go down and another district goes up. We don't know how that will be affected."

The districts also have different lease agreements, different financial obligations for their equipment and buildings, and different labor agreements, Tamburro said, adding that those considerations will be the responsibility of the legal subcommittee.

The firefighters will be dealing with the daily operations issues, such as the structure of command under a consolidated fire district and the involvement of volunteer firefighters in a department consisting predominantly of career firefighters.

Fire District No. 1 is staffed by two full-time firefighters and more than 50 volunteers, according to Hamilton. Districts 2 and 3 have mostly paid staffs.

Pucci's main concern, Hamilton said, is the protection and retention of the township's volunteer firefighters. Not only is it cost-effective to have volunteers in the department, but if a fire breaks out and there are only full-timers, a call would have to be made to off-duty firefighters for backup, whereas volunteers could be called immediately, at any time, Hamilton said.

"So having large numbers of volunteers is clearly in the best interests of public safety, and certainly in the best interests of the taxpayers," he said.

The township is working with Cherry Hill Fire Chief Robert Georgio, since that town consolidated its six districts into one.

"We're doing a lot of fact-finding and a lot of information gathering to see if, in fact, this is going to work for us, and we're really trying to approach it very systematically to gather the information we need to make an intelligent decision," Hamilton said. "And clearly, you want to benefit by the knowledge of somebody who's gone through something similar."

Cherry Hill, he added, is one of the best examples of district consolidation in the state, and that municipality's current commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs was the mayor when that consolidation took place.

Hamilton said the state has shown support for the establishment of shared services, and has even set aside grant money to help municipalities with the cost, should they decide to consolidate.

That decision is the goal of the committee, Hamilton said, because the tax rate disparity has become unreasonable. If a fire breaks out anywhere in the township, all three districts will send equipment and firefighters, offering residents the same service, but with three different price tags.

"Fire protection should be something that everyone is paying the same for, and that's what's driving this," Hamilton said. "It's ludicrous that one neighbor should pay more than another neighbor."