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Fire Siren At Town Hall Not Done Deal Says Mayor
Fire Chief Cites "Gall" After Promise Made
November 5, 2012

S
outheast Pamlico Volunteer Fire Department chief Alan Arnfast says he thought he had a deal with the Town that the fire siren should remain behind Town Hall. But two days after Arnfast got the Town Manager to agree to that, Mayor Bill Sage threw a change-up.

Late on Thursday, Mayor Sage and Town Manager Bob Maxbauer were suggesting that the Town hoist the siren up on a crane and test it at the Fire Station on Straight Road and possibly at other places in town where the siren could be located.

With that, the Mayor reopened the fire siren debate, thought to have been settled two days earlier. That sets the stage for what could be a showdown at the Tuesday, November 6 Town Board meeting.

“If they want to pick another fight,” said Fire Chief Arnfast said after hearing of the Mayor and Town Manager’s suggestion, “they are heading down that road.”

Southeastern Pamlico Volunteer Fire District FIre Chief Alan Arnfast and the fire siren. It was taken down from behind Town Hall a few months ago while renovations were underway. The department did a makeover of the siren – spiffing it up with yellow paint — and wants to return it to a new 50 foot pole behind Town Hall. Arnfast says he’s ready to fight — for a third time — to get town officials to keep their promise to put it back at Town Hall.
Fire Chief: “It Was Settled” – Siren Promised For Town Hall

Arnfast says the Fire Department wants the siren at Oriental’s Town Hall, because it is where they’ve had it for almost 60 years and where it is centrally located to alert the most people. It’s a fairness question too, he says, of keeping it in a neighborhood where people knew it existed when they bought their homes and moved in – as opposed to foisting the loud siren on a new neighborhood.

Along with many others in Oriental who’ve been following the fire siren issue in the past two weeks, the Fire Chief says he thought that it was agreed to keep the siren at Town Hall, after a packed Town meeting Monday October 29 and after a subsequent meeting Tuesday morning October 30 involving the Fire Department, Town Manager Bob Maxbauer and two Town Commissioners.

The conclusion of that October 30 meeting was that the siren would stay at Town Hall and that the cost of wiring it would not be the $7,000-12,000 the Town Manager had claimed a night earlier. Instead, it was determined that for about $1,500, the 1-phase power at Town Hall could be converted to the necessary 3-phase by way of a 3-phase generator. The monetary obstacle was cleared.

“It was settled,” Arnfast said of his meeting Tuesday with Maxbauer. “In no uncertain terms, the pole was going to go at Town Hall.” Arnfast says he and the Town Manager “stood by the construction trailer behind Town Hall,” and even picked the place to plant the siren’s new pole.

Mayor Wants Siren Tested At Fire Station For Possible Placement There

Thursday evening, however, at the Town Board’s sparsely attended agenda meeting – only 2 members of the public were present – Mayor Bill Sage threw that agreement in to question. Instead of emphasizing the location of the siren as laid out in the Tuesday morning deal, the Mayor chose to emphasize that a way had been found to convert 1-phase power to 3-phase power anywhere in Town, not just at Town Hall.

Sage told three commissioners attending the Thursday meeting that he wanted the Town to run tests to see if the siren could be mounted at the fire station house on Straight Road, a mile and a half away. The Town Manager concurred.

Mayor Bill Sage at the Thursday November 1 meeting of the Town Board. At right, Commissioners Larry Summers and Barbara Venturi listen as the Mayor lays out his case for testing the fire siren at locations other than Town Hall. Both commissioners say they thought the issue was settled to keep it there.

As the Mayor and Town Manager spoke, looks of puzzlement and surprise crossed the faces of the three Town Commissioners present. Two of them, Barb Venturi and Larry Summers had taken part in the Tuesday meeting where Maxbauer agreed to keep the fire siren at Town Hall. Venturi put out a press release to that effect. (TownDock reported that agreement in a story that appeared Thursday morning.)

Commissioner Warren Johnson said he thought that the Town had a deal with the fire department – forged on Tuesday – that determined that the siren would stay at Town Hall. Sage swatted Johnson’s comment aside; “Nothing is determined,” said the Mayor, “until this Board determines it.”

Commissioner Venturi also questioned the grounds for reopening the debate. She said her notes of Monday’s meeting — where most of the 50 residents in attendance opposed moving the siren from Town Hall — were that the Board wanted to keep the siren at Town Hall if it weren’t expensive to do so. The Mayor curtly responded to Venturi, “Your notes are wrong.”

Town Commissioner Larry Summers at right reacts as Mayor Bill Sage says he wants to test the siren at places in town other than Town Hall. After the meeting, Summers said, “That was a new one on me” and reiterated that he wanted the board to vote to keep the siren at Town Hall. That will likely come up at the November 6 meeting of the Board.

Sage said that his recollection of Monday’s meeting was that, “by no means did we rule out putting it at the Fire Station.”

“We need to look at the Fire Station,” as a site for the siren, Sage said, as he said he pushed for a sound test. “We need to see who can hear it,” from there. He suggested other sites could be tested as well. The water tower was among the places mentioned.

Town Manager: Fire Department Should Be Happy To Test Siren Elsewhere

To that, the Town Manager concurred. The Town Manager had said on Monday that he didn’t want the siren on a pole at the Town Hall because it would hurt the “aesthetic” of the building whose renovation he designed. Two days after reaching the deal with the Fire Department to keep it there, Maxbauer on Thursday night said that he thought “the Fire Department would entertain this very idea” of testing the siren somewhere other than Town Hall.

Town Manager Bob Maxbauer at the Thursday, November 1 agenda meeting of the Town Board where he said he thought the Fire Department would want to test the siren at places other than Town Hall. Two days earlier, at a meeting with the Fire Department, it had been agreed to keep it at Town Hall.

“I think they’d be very happy to test it,” Maxbauer said, “before it is erected anywhere.”

Fire Chief Cites “Gall” And Says Stick To The Deal

They are not. Contacted after the Thursday night Town Board agenda meeting, Fire Chief Alan Arnfast said that the Town Manager had “gall” to suggest the Fire Department wanted anything but to stick to the agreement reached Tuesday, to put the siren at Town Hall.

Arnfast said it appeared to him that the Mayor and Town Manager were “taking any slack” they could to change the deal.

Arnfast said that if he’d known the siren would be discussed at the Thursday meeting, he’d have attended “for the sake of nipping that in the bud.”

“Nothing we’ve said in the past few months,” said Arnfast, would support the idea of moving the siren to a new location. “We don’t need to run any tests at the Fire Station,” Arnfast said.

TownDock.net asked Arnfast to spell out why the Fire Department says the siren should stay at Town Hall, where it’s been for almost 60 years.

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The Case For Keeping Siren At Town Hall: Alerting The Public

The point of the siren, Arnfast says, is to notify as much of the public as possible that there’s an emergency and to notify firefighters to respond. The siren, which goes off about 24 times a year, is meant to be heard not just by those living within the town limits of Oriental but the surrounding area which is served by the Southeast Pamlico Volunteer Fire District. That includes people who live up the creeks and on the other side of the bridge.

The Southeastern Pamlico Volunteer Fire District includes Oriental and runs out to the Fulcher horse farm on Hwy 55 near Stonewall, to Trent Road, to River Dunes and up Kershaw Road, down to Janeiro and to the Dawson Creek Bridge. The siren may not be heard all over the district but says Arnfast, is best located at Oriental’s Town Hall, a central spot and population center where the most people can hear it.

Arnfast noted that the siren at Town Hall is also set up to let people know if a tornado is closing in on the area. If the main siren were to be moved to the fire station a mile and a half outside of Oriental’s center, it could be inaudible in neighborhoods such as the SailLoft community, he said, on the other side of the Oriental Bridge. Arnfast said that in the case of an unheard tornado warning, loss of life could occur.

“I don’t want to be the one making that decision” to put the siren farther away so that those people can’t hear the alert, said Arnfast. “I sure don’t think Bob Maxbauer should be making it, either.”

One argument for keeping the siren at Town Hall, Alan Arnfast says, is that it is “centralized, centralized, centralized.” It’s best there, in his view, because that’s where the most people can hear it – be they residents or firefighters – and that is the point of sounding the alarm.

Siren As Backup Alert For Firefighters

Keeping the siren at Town Hall makes it more likely that firefighters would hear it, Arnfast said, whether they are in their homes or out and about in town. Volunteer firefighter Eric Kindle backs that up. He says there are times at his Hodges Street home when his pager or radio or phone won’t send a signal, but he’ll know to respond to a fire because the siren has gone off.

Town Hall, undergoing renovations, as it appeared last Thursday. The Town Manager had earlier in the week that he thought the “aesthetic” of the new building would be hurt by having the fire siren behind it. He relented on Tuesday to keep it at Town Hall but on Thursday was agreeing with the Mayor to test the siren at other locations.

Arnfast noted at the Town Board’s meeting on October 29, the siren is a back-up — required by the firefighting insurance agency, ISO — to alert firefighters’ when their pagers and radios don’t work. Meeting that ISO requirement contributes to the fire district’s high rating — and the relatively low fire insurance rates for homeowners here.

Question Of Fairness In Siting The Siren

The Fire Department also wants to keep the siren where it’s been for more than 50 years because, Arnfast says, it’d be unfair to site it in a different neighborhood — or as he put it, to “screw the people” who would then have it placed in their midst. Those who bought homes in the center of town near the fire siren, knew it was there when they moved in, he says. To talk about putting it in to a new place is to kick a “hornet’s nest.”

Arnfast noted that at the Monday meeting Mayor Sage told the audience that he lived a block from Town Hall and its fire siren. Sage said then that he could sleep thru the siren when it went off, but that his wife did not.

Test Credibility Questioned

As to the Mayor’s idea of testing the siren a mile and a half from Town Hall, Arnfast questioned what hoisting the 700-pound siren in the air near the fire station would prove.

Wary after several months of dealing with Town officials on the siren siting issue (and having seen a promise of keeping it at Town Hall reversed before) Arnfast suggested that the hoist-test results could, in his words, “be manipulated” to make the fire station appear a better site than it is.

For instance, he said, the winds blowing near Oriental — and their ability to carry sound — could affect the test.

Alan Arnfast, fire chief of the Oriental area’s volunteer fire department, at the Monday October 29 special Town Board meeting on the fire siren. At left is Missy Tenhet, one of the many residents at the meeting who backed the fire department’s stand to keep the fire siren at Town Hall — and not move it to any other neighborhood in town.

As sailors here know, the prevailing winds in Oriental are generally out of the south. Arnfast said that if the siren were tested at the fire station on a day when the less frequent northeast or northwest winds were blowing, they might carry the siren’s sound more in to town than might normally be heard when a real emergency came up. When prevailing southerlies blow, they would push the noise from the fire station — which is already on the northern edge of town — even further away from town and the bulk of the population.

Resident: Get The Siren Back Up At Town Hall Quickly

Missy Tenhet, who rallied her neighbors last week upon hearing that their residential neighborhood near the Oriental Woman’s Club was being considered as a home for the siren, expressed frustration at the news that Mayor Sage and Town Manager Maxbauer were calling for the tests that could undo the deal to keep the siren at Town Hall.

“The Mayor and Town Manager need to stop changing the deal,” said Tenhet. “They need to stop lying.”

Tenhet noted that the siren was a back-up for the radios and pagers used to notify firefighters that their services were needed, and that it had already been down for the Town Hall renovations for several months.

She urged the Town to get the siren back over Town Hall quickly. “We need that back-up back up.” said Tenhet “The Town Manager and Mayor need to get that siren up at Town Hall as fast as possible.”

She is calling on other residents of town to turn out, despite it being Election Night, to show support of the Fire Department’s position.

At least one commissioner appears ready to make that the Board’s official position, as well. After Thursday’s meeting and again on Friday, Commissioner Larry Summers said that he thought Town Hall was where the siren should go and that he was ready to vote on that at Tuesday’s meeting.

That Election Night meeting starts at 7p and will take place at the First Baptist Church on Broad Street, where meetings have been happening since Hurricane Irene flooded Town Hall.

Posted Monday November 5, 2012 by Melinda Penkava


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