Firefighters, Taxpayers Group Heat Up for Battle in Saturday’s Fire District Election

The borough’s fire district budget is up for a vote this Saturday, and how the fire department will be funded in the future appears to be a burning issue in town.

Specifically, the Spring Lake Heights Board of Fire Commissioners will open the polls this Saturday for taxpayers to decide upon the district budget for 2011. This year’s spending plan, which is the sole source of funding for the borough’s all-volunteer fire department, calls for $8,019 more than last year’s budget to be raised through local property taxes.

That amount breaks down to a property tax hike of .032 cents or about one-third of a penny, said Spring Lake Heights Fire Chief Casey Wilms.

 Getting out the vote and persuading voters to approve the fire district budget is so important to the department that Wilms and a few other borough firemen spent Valentine’s Day night at Monday’s borough council meeting. During the public portion, they asked the council and the general public to consider their ever-increasing service to Spring Lake Heights when they cast their votes.

In 2010, the fire department answered more calls for service than ever before in its history, Wilms told the council.

“The proposed budget has a zero percent tax increase,” Wilms said. “Our budget is one of the lowest in Monmouth County. We want to continue our level of service.”

However, John Lewis, president of the Spring Lake Heights Taxpayers Association, also came out on Valentine’s Day night to speak against the pending fire district budget.

Lewis, a former council candidate, has been circulating a petition around town calling for the dissolution of the fire district. Instead, Lewis and his grassroots group of about 60 residents would prefer that the fire department be included as a line item in the annual municipal budget.

The existing fire district places an extra property tax burden on residents who already are saddled with municipal, county, and school board taxes, Lewis said.

In short, it is the principle of the fire district hiking taxes by even the smallest amount that Lewis and his group oppose. Dismantling the fire district would result in one less tax heaped onto property owners, he said.

Addressing the council, Lewis asserted that if the fire district were dissolved, the governing body could then control the fire department’s purse strings as is done in most New Jersey towns.

Bradley Beach and other nearby towns have realized lower taxes by funding their volunteer fire departments directly out of the municipal budget rather than depending upon a separate fire district, he said.

Most troubling is the lack of transparency that results by placing the fire department under the auspices of a board of commissioners, Lewis said after the meeting. If the fire department were to be funded directly by the council, it would have to justify its budget and account for its expenses.

“As it now stands, there is absolutely no oversight of fire department spending,” Lewis said.

 Meanwhile, Lewis and a crew of volunteers, including several area adolescents, have been circulating  a petition around town to garner voter support for dismantling the fire district. Voters signing the petition agree to ask the council to  hold a public hearing on the dissolution of the district.

Lewis told the council that some firefighters have accused him of breaking borough law by circulating the petition. He asked if an ordinance prohibiting distribution of fliers or petitions in the town was still in effect.

Mayor Fran Enright and Councilman John Brennan, Jr. told Lewis that the ordinance he was referring to had been taken off the books last year. However, the revised law has not yet been codified.

Spring Lake Heights, one of 79 New Jersey municipalities to have a fire district, first organized the entity’s board of commissioners in 1988. State law requires all fire district elections to be held on the third Saturday in February.