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Politics & Government

Borough Agrees to Share Public Works Equipment With Summit, New Providence

Chatham Township, Millburn excluded from agreement.

The Chatham Borough Council has signed on to an agreement that will allow its Department of Public Works to share manpower and machines with DPWs in Summit and New Providence.

The council formally accepted the agreement at its reorganization meeting on Monday.

The agreement is a tough-time, belt-tightening measure that will allow the three towns to borrow equipment and personnel from one another's public works departments on credit. The credit will be in the form of "credit hours" that the lending community can redeem for its own borrowing needs.

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Each town will start with 50 credit hours.

"These three towns have had an informal equipment sharing agreement for years," Borough Mayor Nelson Vaughan said Thursday. "We formalized it for budget purposes to know if we could reasonably borrow equipment instead of buying something big, expensive and complicated."

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He said that the borough's DPW equipment purchases would now be coordinated with those of Summit and New Providence.

Vaughan said that the borough already has a long-term agreement with Long Hill Township for a robotic sewer camera which probes for subterranean leaks and clogs. 

"That's a complicated piece of equipment you use once, twice a week," he said. "Why not share the costs?"

Even though the departments will share equipment, there will never be a moment when there are only Summit or New Providence department members on a piece of Chatham equipment. The same applies to Summit and New Providence equipment.

"When it comes to specific equipment, we would want our own operators on it," New Providence DPW Manager James Johnston said.

That move is also an effort to reduce training costs, since it will mean members of the various departments will not need to be trained on new equipment.

Vaughan said the present agreement got started among the three DPW partners and Chatham Township's DPW and said it was somewhat unique because it united communities in different counties. Summit and New Providence are in Union County and Chatham is in Morris County.

Vaughan said that Chatham Township chose not to join the agreement.

But in a Thursday interview, Chatham Township DPW Director Joseph Barilla indicated that Chatham Township had been given no choice and that the initial negotiations also included Millburn's DPW.  

Barilla said that after a lull in the negotiations, he was surprised to learn that Summit, Chatham and New Providence had an agreement.

"[They] did their own thing," he said. "I was told by Summit Superintendent of Public Works Paul Cascais that I would be offered something later on. That hasn't happened yet. I'm a little perturbed by the whole situation."

Millburn Public Works Manager Tim Monahan said that after a scheduled discussion among the DPWs was cancelled, he read some time later of the three town DPW partnership.

"We were eliminated somehow," Monahan said. "We were excited about the potential and then we read the deal was done. Somebody made a decision to exclude us, and it's a shame." 

Vaughan said he didn't know the specifics of what had happened.

"I was working with the politicians," Vaughan said. "When I learned that the DPWs were talking, I was delighted."

Vaughan said that it had to be understood that discussions take place concurrently on different levels. But he said from his perspective, there was no communication between the groups.

"The DPWs put it together. I'm sure they felt they had a green light from above," he said.

Cascais and Chatham Borough DPW Director Bob Venezia could not be reached for comment.

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