meeting Monday night<\/a>, council unanimously approved a measure that allows its solicitor to move forward in preparing a draft ordinance and draft agreement between the borough and Lower Saucon Fire Rescue for fire protection services.<\/p>\nCouncil President Lynley Solt read a statement that confirmed Hellertown is currently negotiating the agreement with Lower Saucon Fire Rescue, which already provides mutual aid and support to the borough.<\/p>\n
Solt said Hellertown needs to consider the change to provide \u201creliable and uninterrupted\u201d fire protection for residents and businesses amid operational challenges at Dewey. Those, she said, include declining volunteer participation and struggles to maintain continuity and leadership, despite citizen outreach and other recruitment efforts.<\/p>\n
The borough intends to work collaboratively with both Dewey and Lower Saucon Fire Rescue while honoring Dewey\u2019s more than 100 years of dedicated service to Hellertown, Solt added.<\/p>\n
Emergency medical services, which Dewey also provides to Hellertown, would not be impacted by any change to fire protection services, officials said, and Dewey would continue to serve the borough in that capacity.<\/p>\n
David Boulin, a resident from Lower Saucon Township, raised concerns during public comment about the potential for another problematic agreement between Hellertown and Lower Saucon. He offered as an example the controversy over funding issues between the two municipalities related to their shared use of the Hellertown Public Library \u2014 a battle that ultimately went to court in 2023.<\/p>\n
Boulin questioned the extent to which Lower Saucon Fire Rescue is already serving Hellertown and whether Lower Saucon Township taxpayers are getting \u201cpaid back\u201d for services used by the borough, which he said has a \u201chuge tax base\u201d compared to Lower Saucon.<\/p>\n
Councilmembers emphasized that Monday night\u2019s action was only an initial request for the solicitor to prepare preliminary documents and that nothing has been finalized or signed.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Tom Rieger said the potential transition from Dewey to Lower Saucon Fire Rescue is not a \u201chostile takeover.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is mutual conversations amongst all parties,\u201d Rieger said. \u201cThis kicks off a many-month conversation to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
During council discussion on the matter, Boulin interjected to question which parties have been included in conversations that have already taken place, implying that Lower Saucon Township had not been included.<\/p>\n
Solt indicated that representatives from the borough and Lower Saucon Township \u2014 including two councilmembers, the solicitor and the township manager \u2014 as well as members of Dewey Fire Company and Lower Saucon Fire Rescue had all met for a preliminary discussion. At that time, Hellertown was told to negotiate directly with Lower Saucon Fire Rescue, Solt said.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Larry O\u2019Donnell offered some context around the discussions and need for change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important for people to remember that the Dewey Fire Company is a separate nonprofit and not directly controlled by the borough,\u201d O\u2019Donnell said. \u201cWe contract for professional services with Dewey Fire as we do with other nonprofits\u2026this is definitely a complex issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cVolunteer-everything is reaching critical points in a lot of sectors, and the fire departments are definitely hit very hard,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Rieger said volunteers help the entire community \u2014 not one place or another.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegardless of if you live in the township or the borough, if you want to be a firefighter, they\u2019re all practicing right now,\u201d Rieger said. \u201cGo down. Doesn\u2019t matter where you do it; it matters that you do it, and I think that\u2019s what we\u2019re losing as a community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council plans to have more in-depth discussion about the matter at one of its September meetings, Solt said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HELLERTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Hellertown Borough Council could soon be making changes to its fire services. The borough, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,27942,109866,204,42472,108764],"class_list":["post-258835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-dewey-fire-company","tag-fire-services","tag-hellertown","tag-lower-saucon","tag-lower-saucon-fire-rescue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}