Letter: Fire change is bad policy

To the editor:
   
As the fire marshal for a neighboring jurisdiction, I have been following the events taking place in South Brunswick regarding the transfer of the fire marshal’s office from the Police Department to the Building Department. Sadly, it appears that politics, not reality, wins again.
   Fire Marshal Robert Davidson is both a personal and profession acquaintance. He and his inspection staff run one of the best fire prevention operations in the entire state. The knowledge and experience in that office is incredible.
   It is sad that the township manager and council have decided that something that is not broken needs to be fixed. The manager has used false ormisleading statistics to try and hide behind the fact that the township administration has failed to do its job in providing adequate staffing in that office.
   Mr. Davidson has documented for many years the inadequate staffing. South Brunswick has added over 30 million square feet of commercial property and over 15 thousand new residents during the past 10 years. The inspection staff was increased by one inspector last year only after the previous administrator was required to acknowledge during certification to the state Division of Fire Safety that not all state registered Life Hazard Use occupancies had inspections completed. The additional inspector was added in July and completed training in December. The clerical staff has actually been reduced by 1.5 persons since 1990. So even with the added inspector, clerical workload on the inspectors has increased so they are still understaffed.
   The 400 inspections not done is a misstatement of fact. The number of local registration facilities is about 327. The number is also not all buildings; some ofthese local registrations include small offices located in other buildings that have inspections conducted on common areas and larger offices. There is no required inspection schedule for the local registered facilities. Some of these facilities areonly registered for tracking purposes, not inspection purposes, such as pipelines that are federally regulated and inspected. Many of these occupancies were inspected, however for reporting purposes are not considered completed unless all violations are corrected and a certificate is issued. Often lack of cooperation by owners causes inspections to take significant lengths of time to correct.
   We continually get duties added by both state and local laws. Just a week ago, new regulations for carbon monoxide detectors took effect that enforcement responsibilities fall on the fire prevention bureau. In 1992, similar regulations for smoke detectors took effect. This requires inspections for every change in occupancy of a residential dwelling. With the large number of dwelling units and the constant transient population in our region, this is a significant undertaking. South Brunswick is no exception and 15,000 additional residents since 1990 has added hundreds of resale certifications to be added.
   This is not the first time that the fire marshal’s office being under the building department has been reviewed. In the mid 1990s, when this was being studied the last time, the state Division of Fire Safety issued a decision that under the state Uniform Fire Code, the fire Marshal is the chief administrator for the local enforcing agency and is responsible for all day-to-day operations of that agency. This is exactly the same requirements for the construction official that are found in the state Uniform Construction Code. The Division of Fire Safety stated it was not acceptable to place the fire marshal under the construction official because of their identical code-specified job responsibilities. As a result of the study that was done at the time, the decision was made to place the Fire Safety Bureau under the Police Department.
   One more important fact is that is used to show effectiveness of fire prevention bureau activities is the commercial fire dollar loss. If you look atthe South Brunswick commercial dollar loss, there is none since 1997.
   The South Brunswick Fire Prevention Bureau is a model for everyone who wants to do what is right and the best possible job. It is very sad that political issues are about to destroy what many people have worked extremely hard to build into this model operation.
David E. Herbert

Fire Marshal

East Brunswick