BY PEGGY WRIGHT • STAFF WRITER • APRIL 12, 2010
The Mount Olive Council will ask a judge next week to block voters from deciding whether the township should be required to contract with two volunteer rescue squads to provide emergency services over specific hours.
A committee called Save the Mount Olive Rescue Squads was able to collect hundreds more than the 1,100 signatures needed on a petition to get a proposed referendum question on the ballot for either a special election or the November general election.
Though the council last month passed a resolution to table -- or take no action on -- the committee's proposed ordinance to give two volunteer squads specific on-duty hours, township Clerk Lisa Lashway still forwarded the committee's petition to Morris County Clerk Joan Bramhall for placement on the November ballot.
Township attorney John Dorsey has opined that voters have no authority to decide a budgetary issue by referendum. He will ask Superior Court Assignment Judge B.
Theodore Bozonelis on April 20 for an order blocking such a vote.
For many years and up until June 1, 2009, the volunteer squads Flanders Fire and Rescue Co. No. 1 and Budd Lake First Aid and Rescue Squad provided services, with the township making annual appropriations for their equipment and maintenance.
To save money, the township last year retained the services of Atlantic Health Care to station ambulances in Budd Lake and Flanders between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Atlantic is compensated only through the insurance or payments of residents being served by the ambulances. The volunteer squads have continued to respond to all calls between 5 p.m. and 5 a.m. on weekdays and at all hours on weekends.
This year, the council hopes by June 1 to have full-time coverage by Atlantic Health or another provider but would use the volunteer squads as back-up to assist at scenes but not transport patients, said township Administrator William Sohl.
Volunteer committee member Barbara Swasey, a former township councilwoman who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, said the group has also done research and believes Dorsey could be wrong in saying voters can't decide whether the two squads can retain certain hours.
''I feel very strongly about this,'' Swasey said. ''I and my family have had occasion to use our rescue volunteers over the years and they've always responded promptly and with compassion.''
The lawsuit said saving money is imperative and Atlantic's response times have proven to be as good, if not better, than the volunteers squads.
''The 2009 and 2010 budgets were devastating for Mount Olive, which has, perhaps, $500,000 in tax assessments being contested...,'' the township's lawsuit said.
