Crime & Safety

Menendez Highlights Sequester's Threat to Federal Public Safety Funding

Sen. Bob Menendez spoke in Ridgewood Monday at the unveiling of a new village fire engine to urge lawmakers to end the sequester before it further affects public safety at the local level.

Federal public safety grants like the one that paid for the Ridgewood Fire Department’s new $390,000 fire engine could be in jeopardy due to the automatic federal budget cuts, known as the sequester, that took effect March 1, Sen. Bob Menendez said Monday outside fire department headquarters.

Menendez attended the noon unveiling of the department’s 2012 Pierce Saber fire engine to urge his colleagues in Congress to end the sequester before it affects myriad federal programs that could have spill down effects at the local level, particularly in the area of public safety.

“Will communities like Ridgewood have the personnel and the resources they need to respond to the emergencies that can erupt?” Menendez said. “Who will respond to reports like the one that came in recently of a suspicious package left in a garbage can in a local park? Will they have the specialized resources they need to respond to such an incident?”

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Since 2010, the Ridgewood Fire Department has received over $800,000 in federal grants through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Assistance to Firefighters and Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant programs.

Menendez said that while the across-the-board cuts have yet to directly affect FEMA’s firefighter assistance grants, they already have impacted the state’s grant writing workshops that help fire departments and other first responder agencies better their chances of receiving federal funds.

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“We’ve always had a FEMA representative at those workshops to help demystify the process,” he said. “Last week as my staff began planning this year’s workshop, we were told that there would be no FEMA representative available to come to the workshop due to austerity measures that were put in place in response to the sequester.”

Menendez said that without federal assistance to continue public safety programs, municipal governments will be faced with the decision either to raise local taxes to provide what is necessary to keep the community safe or do without and hope for the best.

“There are real life consequences to this process of sequester,” he said. “Because of the blind cuts, we are now literally playing with fire.”

Fire Chief Jim Van Goor said that in his tenure the department had been awarded a $349,000 federal SAFER grant that allowed it to replace three retiring firefighters for two years at no cost to taxpayers, a  and a $131,000 AFG grant for state-of-the-art safety gear.

“It is vital that we continue to invest in our first responders and make sure that they meet their missions day in and day out,” Van Goor said. “Simply put, these grants help our firefighters keep Ridgewood safe.”

He said the village’s new engine, which has been in service since February, was a much-needed upgrade to the 1982 open cab model it replaced.

“It’s got all the safety belt systems, it’s got an anti-roll system, a better braking system than they used to have," Van Goor said. "The pump’s a bigger pump and better capacity than we had before. It’s a really good state-of-the-art fire engine."

With help from an Assistance to Firefighters Grant, the Village picked up only $75,000 of its $390,000 price tag, he said.


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