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During last night’s Village Council Work Session, Council members informally authorized Village Manager James Ten Hoeve to initiate an external performance audit/utilization study of Ridgewood’s Fire Department. The process will be conducted by the same firm now undertaking a similar audit of Ridgewood’s police department.
Ten Hoeve indicated that four (4) career firefighters are planning to retire during 2008. He suggested that it might be an opportune time to consider reorganizing the department, and staffing all fire prevention positions with civilians instead of career firefighters.
The audit/utilization study, estimated to cost $20.5K, is expected to begin shortly.
In an unrelated, rather bizarre fire department matter, Deputy Mayor Betty Wiest publicly chastised Fire Chief James Bombace during last night’s meeting saying that she’d recently tried delivering cookies to the Ridgewood Fire Headquarters and was quite frustrated because no one answered the door. She asked the Chief to make sure that the doorbells were properly working.
