May 18, 2008
By SETH AUGENSTEIN
SPARTA — A $200,000 state grant for emergency dispatch upgrades was a pleasant surprise to the township. It also caught two neighboring towns unaware.
The money is earmarked to revamp and expand the capacity of the township's Public Safety Answering Point — the communication hub where emergency calls are received and then dispatched to police, fire and other departments.
Sparta received confirmation of the grant in April. But two other towns Sparta put on the application as potential consolidation partners were not informed of the funds until after New Jersey's Office of Information Technology's decision.
Andover Township Administrator Jayme Alfano said at Monday's Township Committee meeting that she was surprised by the inclusion of the township on Sparta's application.
"Apparently, there has been some kind of communication gap," Alfano said.
Marianne Smith, Hardyston's manager, said Sparta's "initiative" had been done by Sparta on its own, and "not with any level of authorization" from the Hardyston council. She wasn't surprised by the move, she said, but Hardyston had not had talks with Sparta about the grant, and it is not ready to consolidate with Sparta yet.
"We're not by any means ready to move forward at this moment," Smith said.
Henry Underhill, Sparta's township manager, said the grant was an active attempt to consolidate services. He said there has been some discussion among the police chiefs about sharing services, and that applying for the grant was not done "behind the backs" of the other towns. The money would be used for equipment and training that might eventually provide the means for sharing the Public Safety Answering Point in the future. Underhill said that Sparta already shares its dispatch center with Franklin, Ogdensburg, Lafayette and Stillwater — and that the state could mandate that Sussex County municipalities further consolidate their emergency response systems in the near future.
Sparta Police Chief Ernest Reigstad said Sparta's dispatch center most recently added Stillwater and Lafayette to its coverage area, and it needed capacity for any further expansion. He said there is always the potential of sharing, even if there are not specific talks at any one time.
"We're all always talking," he said. "Everything's kind of fluid."
Smith said the grant money had not created a rift between Sparta and the other towns.
"It's clearly not a hostile situation by any means," she said.
