As all of you may now be aware from my earlier blog articles and posts on FB, the Township was the recipient of a $725,000 grant award from the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs for the engineering and architectural design, environmental studies, and preparation of bid documents for a new centralized Emergency Management Operations Center. Importantly, the grant has no requirement that our town take action to build a central station. The link to the grant award is here:
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:8defb050-9055-49ce-b33e-d55b848e261a
We announced (in a prior blog article - the link is here: LawrenceTownshipNJManagerKPN: $725K Grant Received for the Study and Design of a New Emergency Management Facility) and other social media sites when we received this grant award, and then the community rumor mill went wild, not unexpectedly.
At the time, back in July 2022, though many found the news to be good, concern resonated with our volunteer fire companies, which they took as a signal of their demise. Despite assurances that was not the case at all, it persisted. They provide a valuable service to our community, and we are deeply indebted to all past and present volunteer firefighters. Then, when we announced that the initial location for a potential site shifted from the Lawrence Road Fire House site at 1252 Lawrence Road (a site we believed when we applied for the grant was township-owned but was revealed to be owned by the fire company instead - long story about a reverter clause in a deed decades old) to a section on the southern portion of municipal land where our municipal building and police building presently exist, the concern grew from just the volunteers to residents that live near the municipal complex. As a result, a group of those residents attended the last two council meetings, expressing their concerns about the need for a central station and, of course, its location at the municipal complex. To quell a concern that was raised by one of the residents who spoke at the last meeting, the Township was authorized to use the grant funds to study the municipal complex as the possible site. Here is a link to the emails from the NJDLGS to us confirming approval:
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:44beb64b-952e-4f5d-8c9a-9af1dca8595b
Importantly, I want to emphasize to all, two critical points: 1) what we are doing is compiling information to better understand what we would need as a community if we decided upon a central emergency management facility, and 2) once we understand the type of building that would be necessary to meet all of the federal and state standards to house a Fire Department, Emergency Medical Services and 911 Dispatch center, where it can and should be located to best serve our community in a fiscally responsible way.
There is no question that our community needs to seriously study our present firefighting program, which includes a combined career and volunteer force. As with many other communities in our state and around the country, the ranks of volunteer firefighters are at an all-time low. Communities (like ours) that relied historically (and) entirely on volunteers for fire response and now, more recently, with a combined fire department must (if responsible leadership means anything) require us take a good hard look at our present and future fire response to make important decisions in the best interests of public safety for our community. The irrefutable data tells us we need to undertake this fact-gathering now with the understanding that there will be pushback from those who feel deep concern about a potential decision made by our elected officials that may impact them personally, whether real or perceived (and both are valid).
This grant allows us a unique opportunity to fact-gather using funds that would otherwise come from the community's taxpayers. At the end of the process, we will understand exactly what would be involved in transitioning to a central location for our Fire/EMS and 911 departments. We will understand the type and quality of the facility that will be necessary to conduct operations and have a good basis to estimate the total cost involved (and potential long-term savings). It is the only way for our elected officials to make an informed decision on the present and future of a critical element of our overall public safety obligation to the community.
The elected officials are committed to ensuring the process includes public meetings to allow for public comment and questions so they can better understand the opinions and concerns of the community. These meetings will come once we have completed a needs assessment, and the elected officials have done their due diligence in better understanding the data and the opinions rendered by the professionals we engage to conduct the studies. We will request that the representatives of the firm we engaged in conducting the studies participate in the meetings to ensure the meetings are productive and involve a meaningful exchange of information among the participants.
I have seen a post or two on FB expressing ideas about the Township acquiring a commercial property to locate a central facility. At this time, the use of currently owned township property makes much better sense financially for two reasons: (1) We don't incur the cost of having to purchase commercial property (at a time when we don't even know if we are going to build one) and, (2) we don't take a property currently paying taxes off the township tax rolls - which would require taxpayers to make up for the lost revenue in future budgets. Also, locating a facility on already existing township-owned property (in the same area experts deemed appropriate) makes sense since it would be a facility on township property being used for an important public safety purpose.
However, NO DECISIONS HAVE BEEN MADE to have a central emergency management facility or where one would go, but we must go through the process of fact-gathering to put the elected officials in the best position to make an informed decision. They may decide at the end of this process that this idea of a central facility is inappropriate for our community and that other steps should be taken to address the public safety needs. But given our present circumstances, I believe it is their responsibility to take on this difficult issue to meet their obligations to the community they serve.
Stay tuned for further updates!
