STONE HARBOR – At its meeting Sept. 6, the Stone Harbor Council voted to extend the use of three part-time firefighters through Sept. 30, rather than Labor Day. The short extension is a further symptom of the borough’s continuing loss of volunteers and its ongoing transition to a paid fire department.
Fire Chief Roger Stanford told the governing body that the department was down to three volunteer firefighters who actually live in the borough.
“All our other volunteers are off the island,” he said. Off-island volunteers impact emergency response to calls for service, a fact Stanford pointed to when justifying the move to full-time paid firefighters in 2020. The start of summer, part-time paid personnel in 2021 was a response to the ongoing need for coverage during the busiest months.
Stanford said that even paid, part-time seasonal positions were hard to fill. The department currently has three. One critical goal in the staffing changes is to ensure that there are at least four firefighters able to respond to an emergency.
Standards call for at least four firefighters on-site before certain actions can be safely taken. Meeting those standards with an acceptable response time became impossible with an all-volunteer department and propelled the transition to paid personnel.
Rio Grande – Middle Township Deputy Mayor Ike Gandy gets things done. An elected official who hears the concerns of his constituents and takes swift action is almost unheard of. Mr. Gandy is the outlier. I…
