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Community Corner

Shared services, consolidation needed in Howell Twsp Fire Dept

Duplication of services is running rampant in the 5 fire companies (districts) of Howell Township.  There are 5 commissioners per district each 1 makes an annual salary of 5-10K, that makes 25 fire commissioners in the township.  If consolidation is going to happen it should start there, cut out 20 of those commissioners and have 5 for the whole town.  There are also 15 volunteer fire chiefs in the town and a career fire bureau chief and captain and each 1 gets an SUV (including volunteers).  To my understanding there are about 60 pieces of fire apparatus in the town: 10 engines, 5 rescues, 6 ladders, 5 brushes, 5 tankers, 5 utilities, 7 specials and 15 chief SUVs.  There are also 2 companies that have paid firefighters to supplement the volunteers.  Why are paid firefighters supplementing volunteers? It should be the other way around.  If Howell dumped everything and started from scratch with one real career fire department with one chief and volunteers to supplement the paid firefighters the taxpayers could get much better service for the money they are already paying (the 5 districts and fire bureau have combined annual budgets of almost $6million)  There is already a career fire bureau chief which could be made the chief the career captain could be made a deputy chief and 2 of the volunteers could be hired as deputy chiefs.  There are already 2 paid staffs, add on a few more and there is a full career department to answer all calls 24/7 in a timely manor and be helped by volunteers as needed.  Sell all of the extra apparatus.  I found all of this information on the fire companys websites, fire commissioners websites, howell township website, and app.coms data universe, I also asked questions to people I know that are members of some of the districts.  This could be the model town for shared services and consolidation Chris Christie, get off your ass and do something.  I can only imagine most of the states volunteer fire departments are run like this.

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