Herald News (Passaic County, NJ)
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All Rights Reserved
PASSAIC COUNTY, N.J. — Time was in New Jersey that the great majority of those who responded to emergency calls were volunteers. Just like many volunteer firefighters, they were people who embraced volunteerism as a way of giving back to the community in which they lived. They sought to serve, not for a paycheck or any artificial glory, but for the mere pride of service and the appreciation for the places they called home.
Nowadays, sadly, some of that volunteer tradition is being lost in North Jersey. According to an in-depth front page story in Sunday’s Herald News (“Local units facing crisis of their own”), many North Jersey towns are struggling to fill their volunteer ranks, especially in regard to emergency responders. In response to the shortfall, some towns have resorted to taking on additional paid EMS workers, while others have begun paying EMS volunteers small stipends, while still others have organized a hybrid approach that includes both volunteers and privately contracted services.
According to Bill Dressel, executive director of the New Jersey League of Municipalities, the state’s volunteer tradition is too important to be lost altogether.
“If we do away with the volunteer ambulance corps, it will wreak havoc on our already overburdened property owners,” cautioned Dressel.
Indeed, at a time when the need for more emergency personnel seems greatest, the ranks of volunteers seem to be shrinking. And not only among EMS crews, but among those who coach youth league sports and tutor children after school.
Dressel, whose non-profit group has pushed legislation to boost ambulance volunteer recruitment, attributes the drain in part to the hectic lifestyles in the Garden State, where in many cases husbands and wives work full-time just to keep up mortgage bills and pay property taxes.
Now comes the double whammy, a “Catch 22": because fewer people in New Jersey are able to volunteer as emergency responders, more towns are feeling the pinch, and in some cases passing the expense on to taxpayers.
In Lodi, for instance, residents felt a tax increase for $112,000 used to maintain the borough’s 15-member daytime ambulance crew.
Meanwhile, voters in Haledon, North Haledon and Prospect Park recently approved a referendum to pay stipends to their volunteer emergency crews.
“This is a no-brainer,” said Haledon Mayor Domenick Stampone. “It is an incentive to track and maintain members.”
And with talk originating from Trenton these days regarding a potential 4 percent cap on municipal spending increases, more and more towns will be forced to look at creative ways to stretch their emergency services dollar.
Ideally, more towns would seek some version of the stipend system, or rather some formula or incentive that at least keeps volunteers in the mix.
As one longtime Hillsdale ambulance corps volunteer, Al Murphy, explains, “There’s a difference in the dedication of a volunteer and someone who is doing it because he’s paid.”
That’s not to say professionals are not well-trained, or careful in their work. Still, Murphy is right; there is something about volunteerism that makes it an essential part of civilized society.
Americans saw it in the days after Sept. 11, and saw it again after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
Perhaps because of societal changes in recent decades, and along with an increasingly high cost of living in this state, New Jersey’s once vaunted volunteer corps has grown thinner. Yet it must never be displaced entirely; it is a much too vital entity for that.