Pay Volunteers For Overnight Firehouse Stays

AVALON – The Oct. 12 meeting of Avalon Borough Council saw the adoption of the ordinance that establishes a stipend program for active volunteers of the Avalon Fire Department. 
Like many island municipalities, Avalon recruits many of its volunteer firefighters from mainland communities. To improve the response time for alarms, Avalon moved to a stipend program that creates incentives for staffing the firehouse overnight and at other times when it is currently understaffed.
A similar program has been in place in Stone Harbor where the results were encouraging to officials. 
The program has been organized in a manner that complies with Department of Labor and Internal Revenue Service guidelines for payments to volunteers and does not jeopardize the department’s volunteer status.
Effective Jan. 1, 2017 the program will be funded by an appropriation in the annual municipal budget and governed according to terms and conditions spelled out in a joint memorandum of understanding negotiated between the borough and the fire department.
Beach Tags
Chief Financial Officer James Craft introduced a proposal to move to the electronic sale of beach tags. The process has been working in Sea Isle City. Craft said that municipality reported no problems.
The convenience of buying beach tags online would result in slightly higher costs for the buyer since a small transaction fee charged by the vendor would be added to the tag’s cost.
Council member William Burns pointed out that such sales are “The way things are going.” He said, “Everyone buys everything online now.”
The system would work through the buyer’s smartphone, and the phone would have an electronic tag on it that tag checkers could scan.
Council President Nancy Hudanich expressed some misgivings.
She asked for more data on usage at other locations in addition to Sea Isle City. She also wanted information concerning the plans for training of tag checkers.
Efforts to get accurate daily balances for the beach tag accounts have paid dividends and Hudanich wanted assurance that the new processes would not upset those gains.
The subject will be added to a future work session agenda when Craft has data from other locations. The goal is to implement the new option, if approved, for the presale period for 2017 tags.
Atlantic City Electric
Assistant Business Administrator James Waldron informed council that Atlantic City Electric is planning a Phase II to its Peermont substation project.
The utility, having implemented higher capacity transmission lines from the mainland to the new substation, wants to implement a distribution feeder system that will increase reliability.
The new feeder system requires replacing wooden poles with new wooden poles that will, on average, be five to seven feet taller than those in place.
The issue is a controversial one in Stone Harbor where many residents are still irate over the steel poles constructed to carry the transmission lines. Those residents want the electric company to be moving infrastructure underground rather than overhead.
The utility will attend a council meeting Oct. 26 for a presentation of its plans for the feeder system and its impact on the borough. That presentation will include a discussion of the route the feeder system will take.
Stream Meetings?
Resident Martha Wright urged council to consider live streaming of council meetings and zoning/planning meetings. Wright argued that citizen engagement is important and streaming is a technology easily available and implemented to further that goal.
Using data from a newspaper article, she said that 87 percent of the borough’s homes are owned by “out-of-town owners” principally living in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
She cited the Livestream implementation in Cape May which has met with wide viewer participation in the actions of city government.
The governing body in Cape May views the investment in the technology as a move toward greater transparency in municipal affairs. In a follow-up email to the meeting discussion, Wright explained the use of Livestream, a website “designed for local organizations and small communities” to ameliorate the concerns expressed at the meeting by Hudanich who worried about using limited air time on the local cable channel.
Wright said after the meeting that she would continue the discussion at a future council meeting. She said it is important to leverage technology in ways that encourage greater participation in local government.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.