Lunchtime ideas from resident who wants to help

[anon-2qn2]

Just a quick few thoughts of things I found in a 20 minute web search that could help our town with the ongoing emergency services/ TC debate and help us compare and (if you agree) see what good looks like:

I found a really nice example of what a township financial report might looms like: https://www.cranberrytownship.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/1916

While their town is ~ 9x more residents and their budget double ours, it provides context and info that we might add to (yes it is "Cranberry"- this is the first I really liked in the time allotted):
https://www.cranberrytownship.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/1916

Here is our budget for comparison:
https://www.cranburytownship.org/sites/g/files/vyhlif4296/f/uploads/2021_user_friendly_budget.pdf

As you can see there, we (CranBURY) pay our TC a total of ~$30K in '21

They also have a volunteer fire company that looks to have a great relationship with the town: See their '21 report here: https://www.ctvfc21.org/files/news/125/2021%20CTVFC%20Annual%20Report_Final.pdf

To compare these 2, we BURY spent ~$137K & 106K the past 2 years ('20 & '21 , respectively) on "Fire Official Salary and Other", they ('BERRY) spent $154K in '21.

If we look at total spends (Salaries, Capital Equipment and operating), BERRY spends $1.145M and we (BURY) spend $644K.

So, the total spends in '21 for Fire (Capital, operating and other) for BERRT was $1.145M and the total for us (BURY) was $644K (excluding pension funds as this seems combined with police).

Who knows, maybe we spend too little on FC. For example, we can see how the BERRY invests hugely in recruitment and we can see details oh how their $ is spent. We can't see those details in the public forum for the BURY.

Also, something relatively inexpensive that they do is they have a good website: https://www.ctvfc21.org/
which I am sure furthers these causes. as I said earlier, I love our FC people, but I also don't know you from high school and prefer not to have to connect on Facebook or to go to you when I want to know how to volunteer or what's going on etc.

So, TC and FC- There don't seem to be many FB likes to these hot topics and the discussions here aren't productive, but maybe these other ways of doing it can help. Ok, back to work