Norwood goes to the polls for public safety

The single ballot question centers on the proposed $1.8 million tax override to allow the Norwood fire Department (NFD) and the Norwood Police Department (NPD) to increase their rosters to deal with the documented increased call volume over the last five-to-10 years.

The NFD’s and NPD’s ask was codified at May’s Town Meeting – https://gvimes.link/tmoverride – with a vote of 126 Town Meeting members in favor, 40 opposed and six abstaining. The override would allow for 13 more firefighters and five more police officers (with funding for additional police over five years).

The override comes after months of planning by the Town, originating with a staffing study performed by John Parrow Consulting that concluded Norwood was behind the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) staffing standards, which are mostly based on population – https://gvimes.link/nfdstdy

Town Manager Tony Mazzucco has said that Norwood has been behind those standards for a while, but with the Norwood Hospital around and the Town’s management, they’ve been close enough that the department and the Town were not negatively affected by it. But seeing annual increases in call volume over the last few years and a huge increase in travel time for ambulances going out of Town for medical emergencies, the burden was being felt.

The NFD has been hosting many informational sessions where the department’s officers made their cases for the additional staffing – https://gvimes.link/nfdovr – and the NPD touched on it during a public outreach session – https://gvimes.link/npdstaff

For the fire department, the main thrusts have been that sick or otherwise unavailable officers make for unsafe situations if there is a big fire emergency in Town. The NFD stated that when a fire occurs, everyone on a shift has their job, and when someone is out, those jobs have to take place sequentially, not simultaneously, which loses minutes during a fire. With new synthetic materials, retired Norwood Firefighter Paul Ronco said, residents have only three minutes to get out of a building if it’s on fire. So those minutes count.

The other push was for training. When you have a shift scheduled to train, they’re currently training while on duty, and that means they have to stop to respond. And they can’t really pick up where they left off, meaning a lot of training has been going by the wayside.

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On the NPD’s side, the pitch is similar. Currently on the overnight shift, there are only five officers covering the whole Town. If something big happens requiring all of them, subsequent call responses may suffer. These new officers will help plug that gap, as well as allow the department more leeway to help respond to regional criminal threats, like scammers and car theft rings.

The opponents to the override have been vocal, saying it’s not fair that an override is being used to fund the staffing increases and that other areas of the budget should be cut to make the necessary staff increases.

What those cuts are, remain unclear.