November 24, 1992 (~estimated)

Council Votes to Bond Borough’s Share Of New Fire Truck and Firehouse Repairs

At its meeting last week, Borough Council voted to bond its share of a new $420,000 fire truck and $166,000 worth of firehouse repairs. The Borough’s portion of joint Fire Department expenditures, a figure which is based on ratables, is 34 percent.

Mayor Marvin Reed said he did not believe a companion measure had yet been adopted in the Township, which pays the remaining two-thirds of Fire Department costs. Noting that the contract to purchase the truck will come back to Council before the truck is bought, the Mayor said he did not want to go ahead with the actual purchase of the truck while the issue of Fire Department cost sharing keeps bubbling.

“I don’t want to suddenly find Township Committee coming back to us and saying they will buy the truck on a different sharing formula,” said Mr. Reed.

Last month, some members of Township Committee balked at paying two-thirds of repairs to firehouses in the Borough when the Township has no equity/ownership in them, and also expressed reluctance to pay $280,000 for the new telesquirt fire truck. Township Commit-teeman Larry Glasberg asked for a review of the funding formula.

Borough Attorney Michael Herbert told Mayor and Coun-cil that he has been reviewing a suggested joint Fire Depart-ment ordinance with Township Attorney Ed Schmierer, and that they were working on iron-ing out any disagreements on the cost sharing. He also said they were talking about joint ownership of Fire Department properties.

Mr. Herbert said he will have something to show Council by the end of the year.

Contract with Township

It appears Township Committee is not ready either to re-solve the issue or let go of it.” said the Mayor. “We may have to have a further discussion of what kind of contract we want with the Township. We can’t have this issue debated each time we make a purchase for the Fire Department.”

In other Fire Department business, Council confirmed the election of Raymond A. Bianco as fire chief, Benjamin R. Warren as deputy fire chief. and Robert K. Toole as assistant fire chief for 1993.