Opinions Differ on Closing Holly Beach Firehouse to Voters

WILDWOOD – City voters won’t be heading to the Holly Beach firehouse for the upcoming May 10 municipal election. A school election April 27 is also out. Instead, the Wildwoods Convention Center will host two of the most ballyhooed elections in the city’s history, a move triggered by necessity or vengeance, depending on who’s talking.
The Holly Beach Volunteer Fire Company, in a letter dated March 18, notified the city it would no longer allow elections at its Washington Avenue building. Signed by Secretary Robert Harvey, the all-caps, three-paragraph missive states in part that the fire company closed its doors “due to the recent decision of the mayor and commissioners to no longer support the (city’s) volunteer fire companies.”
“Namely,” it states, “to no longer accept financial responsibility” for the utilities.
It goes on to say that “due to the lack of support by the current administration,” the firehouse will no longer be able to provide “no charge” usage of its facility, but will be available on a “rental-basis only,” elections not included.
Mayor Gary DeMarzo confirmed that the city, earlier this year, pulled its cash support from both the Holly Beach Fire Company and the city’s other volunteer organization, the Wildwood Fire Company on Pine Avenue. Both groups, he said, had utility payments at their buildings cut off, including gas, electric, cable, phone and Internet.
DeMarzo said the city’s bleak financial picture heading into the new year precipitated the change. In a certified letter to both companies dated Jan. 10, 2011, he noted “lean and troubling financial times” as reason to “understand and properly manage funds” entrusted to public servants. He also advised that residents sought a “true picture” of what both organizations cost and warned he would be seeking a future audit of each.
“Closing their doors to the election?” DeMarzo told the Herald. “That’s just retaliation for the audit.”
According to DeMarzo, he’s warned Holly Beach before that he found their bookkeeping to be suspect.
In a letter dated Aug. 26, 2010 from the mayor to Harvey regarding social affairs permits, DeMarzo wrote that the fire company is “under scrutiny for several monetary agreements, both written and verbal,” that were entered into with the municipality in the past.
The letter states that “anomalies” were found during the city’s own audit and asks that the fire company “secure any money generated in escrow” and “maintain any sales receipts generated or any other monetary transactions” related to the group’s events.
Failure to do so, the letter says, will result in cancellation of the organization’s social affairs permits.
“This latest move is just a way to get back at the city for calling them out,” said DeMarzo.
Harvey, however, disagreed.
“It’s not retaliation for the books,” he said, referencing the fire company’s unwillingness to open their books to the city.
“They’ve truly put us in the corner. We’re going to have to rent out the facility just to afford the utilities they won’t pay,” he said.
“It’s either that, or we do a lot more fundraising,” he added.
Neither the city nor the fire company had a figure immediately available on the overall cost of utilities.
“But it’s not cheap to maintain,” said Harvey.
Additionally, he said, the city also stripped Holly Beach of its annual clothing allowance. Each of the 30-plus members of the group would have been given $200 around Christmas, but it never materialized last year, Harvey said.
“I’ve been with the company 53 years, and this is the first time we didn’t get that,” he said. “They city’s just decided to not support us in any way, shape or form.”
Harvey said the volunteer firemen purchase a lot of their own gear, and the clothing allowance helped offset that.
He also said the firehouse that local officials now refuse to support with utility payments was built at no expense to the city or its taxpayers.
“They didn’t spend one single penny on it,” Harvey said, “not on that or the 200 pieces of equipment inside it.”
But, he said, the city, and the mayor specifically, continue to “take the company to task.”
“We purchased a truck. We paid for it with our own money, not the taxpayers’ money. He (DeMarzo) turned us into the state and said we did not use the bidding process,” said Harvey. “It’s just the way it is. That’s the path he’s chosen.”
Likewise, he said, space on the boardwalk that the fire company was allowed to rent out to others was taken away.
“A resolution was adopted years ago giving that to us,” Harvey said. “But, they took it away too. The city owns it, and they just took it back.”
As a private organization, Harvey said the fire company is non-profit and tax-exempt. It is also not subject to a city audit, he added.
“We don’t take money from the city or the taxpayers,” said Harvey. “We’re an independent organization and our funds belong to us.”
For example, he said, the organization’s own funds of approximately $3,200 just paid for a broken heater in the building.
“And we’ve got another one going bad, so we’ll have to pay to fix that too,” he said.
Maintenance, he said, in addition to the utilities, and the added costs of equipment and training leave the fire company no choice but to rent out the building for events.
“Because our hoagie sales and other fundraisers just aren’t going to cut it,” Harvey said. “The expense has become too great.”
The Holly Beach Firehouse has been used for every federal, state and local election for about the last 10 years, said Harvey. The vote to close it this year for those purposes was unanimous.