The Edison Firefighters Association (EFA), the union representing Edison’s 140 paid firefighters, critiqued the Township Council for what it called a “refusal” to schedule a meeting to address the impact of several relatively new administrative policies on public safety.
Members of the council’s public safety committee, however, said the firefighters are being inflexible, and stated that it is the union that is preventing the meeting from happening, not the council, due to a disagreement over its format.
The difference in opinion is over whether or not a meeting discussing the firefighters’ concerns should be open to, and allow comments from, members of the public.
The EFA would prefer to have the meeting open, saying that the public has a right to know what’s happening in their town firsthand, rather than have the information be filtered from township authorities.
“The main thrust is we want these to be public hearings. We want them to be public, not something swept under the rug, and Choi and his four council members are not letting it happen. … They are looking to have a private, secret meeting, which we are not [agreeing with], because the public should have the right to know what is going on,” said EFA President Robert Yackel in a phone interview on Nov. 7.
Opposing members of the council’s public safety committee, the body involved in discussions of the matter, say that there’s no reason to involve the public and that attempts to do so are simply political grandstanding.
Council Vice President Wayne Mascola, a member of the committee, said the talks are not a hearing but a fact-finding mission, and so the meetings do not need public comment at this time.
“This, it’s not a hearing. We were basically fact-finding, so the public does not need to speak at this meeting, and that is what they [the EFA] were upset about,” Mascola said on the phone Nov. 7. “We need to find the basic facts first before we go any further.”
Mascola noted that he didn’t think the public should be denied a chance to comment at all, saying that further down the road, there could be opportunities for that. The councilman just said that for now, he believes it would be best if they could discuss things among themselves in private, ideally with both the EFA and the fire administration. He also said that even if one prefers a public meeting, surely a private one is better than no meeting at all.
“The logic is beyond comprehension. If I had a problem as grave as they were saying, I would try to talk to everyone willing to listen to me, but because we’re not going to have cameras and microphones, the problems are no longer there?” said Mascola.
Mascola said that the public safety committee had tried to hold a meeting with the EFA on Oct. 15, but that the union didn’t show up because the meeting was not going to be public. With this, Mascola said that Yackel’s motivations are political and don’t have anything to do with the public’s safety, accusing him of trying to politicize what is essentially “an employee-type situation.”
“They refused to show up, so how can they say we’re not willing to listen? This is grandstanding. If this is a very important problem, wouldn’t you talk to anyone willing to listen? We were there. They elected not to
show up,” said Mascola.
Yackel strongly disagreed with this assessment and said that the reason he is pushing for a public meeting so passionately is that he wants the public to get the information firsthand, before it has a chance to be politically spun in the administration’s favor.
“We [aren’t] going to any meetings not open to the public, period. They are trying to have these secret public meetings so they can take it to the mayor’s office so they can spin it, and we’re not going to let that happen. We want to put it all on the table and let the chips fall where they may. Honesty is the best policy,”
said Yackel.
Yackel said he’d go into more specifics as to what the EFA was concerned about should a public meeting be held, but he said that among the many policies the union took issue with was the practice of sending two firefighters per engine on a call rather than the three to four they recommend, an increasing reliance on volunteer and out-of-town firefighters, and inadequate and unsafe training schedules. When asked whether it would be better to have a private meeting rather than no meeting, he reiterated his commitment to making sure the public has a right to know what is happening, saying that if the proceedings remain private, the issues will be silenced.
“Because they are going to sweep it under the rug, like they do everything else since this guy has taken office. The public has a right to
know. The public has a right,” said Yackel.
Fire Chief Norman Jensen defended the practices of the fire department administration in an interview on Nov. 10 and said that some of the changes the EFA has demanded are impractical while others are simply unrealistic. He said the fire department has been responding with two firefighters per truck “for as long as I can remember.”
“Sure, I’d like to see a big, gigantic fire department. That would be great. But can I afford to try to meet the standards they want me to? It would take me a minimum of 56 more firefighters to get near what Mr. Yackel wants: an officer and three men on every piece of equipment,” said Jensen. “They want things that are just not achievable.”
He also said that the fire department has more people now than when the Durham Woods gas fire explosion happened in 1994 that caused massive damage.
Jensen also said that the use of volunteer and out-of-town fire companies is part of the mandated mutual aid program set up between Edison and a number of surrounding towns.
In response to the stated concerns regarding the training schedule, Jensen said the fire department only hires trained firefighters who have already been certified, and so there is little need to train someone in things that they have already learned at the fire academy. He also said that continuing training still goes on all the time, in sessions ranging between a day to three weeks, so he does not understand why Yackel thinks training is inadequate.
Jensen said he felt that many of the issues the EFA raised are “political grandstanding” and noted that more than 73 percent of career firefighters in Edison make $98,000 base pay, not counting overtime, which he said is extremely generous in Edison.
“If you sneeze, you can call it overtime,” said Jensen.
Jensen dismissed the calls for a public meeting as a call to score more political points for the EFA, saying that if the issue were really that important, all the members of the council have his home number, cell number and office number and can contact him anytime to inquire as to the safety of the township.
Not everyone on the public safety committee was against the idea of having a public meeting. Councilman Anthony Massaro, the committee’s chair, said that he felt letting the public at least sit in would be a good idea. He lamented that so much time has been devoted to discussing the details of the meeting, though, rather than having the meeting itself.
“I believe the public should be able to attend and, to the extent that it’s reasonable, I think the public should be able to comment also. … It’s unfortunate we are spending so much time discussing the format of the meeting rather than getting it done,” Massaro said on Friday.
The EFA and the Choi administration have clashed multiple times in the past, despite initially endorsing the mayor during his run for the office in 2005. The two have come into conflict over a proposal from the mayor to head the department with a civilian director, a measure that ultimately failed. The EFA has also called for the resignation of Chief Norman Jensen over changes to the administration in December 2007 and sued the town in May over a contract dispute.
Contact Chris Gaetano at [email protected].