Hamilton inches closer to fire consolidation

HAMILTON >> The Hamilton Township firefighter unions on Tuesday announced they have collected enough petition signatures in each of the township’s nine fire districts to move forward with consolidation.

“The events of the past few days in Seaside Park, New York City and Elizabeth served as reminders of how critical a central command and unified communications are in emergency situations,” said both of Hamilton’ s F MBA union presidents in a statement .“Consolidation would make the Hamilton Fire Department better in both of these areas, allowing us to more adequately respond to any emergency.”

FMBA Local 84 President Mike Kiernan and FMBA Local 284 President Nick Buroczikicke doff the petition collection efforts last October in hopes of consolidating the township’s big government fire service into a single district or a municipal fire department that services the entire 40-square-mile municipality.

New Jersey state law requires a certain threshold of petition signatures to be collected from local district voters and submitted to the municipal clerk’ s office for validation before Hamilton Council can consider an ordinance to transform the township’s disjointed fire service into a unified firefighting force.

Hamilton’s professional firefighters had encountered setbacks in their petition-collection efforts earlier this year, but the union leaders on Tuesday essentially declared victory in their yearlong collection efforts.

“Today’s submission represents the conclusion of the Hamilton FMBA’s yearlong effort to collect signatures from voters in every fire district in Hamilton so that the process of consolidation can move forward as prescribed by New Jersey state statute,” the FMBA union leaders said Tuesday in their joint statement not long after they had handed over a plethora of signed petitions to the municipal clerk’s office.

“While procedurally, this process is now fully in the hands of our local government, our commitment to seeing this process through hasn’t wavered,” the union leaders added. “We expect that we will continue to be called upon to offer input, based on the firefighting skills and expertise of our members, and as we do every time the alarm rings, we will answer those calls.”

The New Jersey Department of Community Affairs’ Division of Local Government Services last year accepted Mayor Kelly Yaede’s request to conduct a comprehensive study of Hamilton’s fire service. That study, when completed, is expected to help guide the township on how to best approach a possible consolidation of the township’s nine autonomous fire districts, which are each governed by five elected commissioners who all collect taxpayer-funded annual salaries.

The state’s report, however, “is still in draft,” according to a DCA communications manager, who on Monday via email said, “We expect to present it to Hamilton shortly.”