Borough Council Questions Interlocal Services Agreement

At the Bloomingdale borough council meeting Tuesday, a resolution for an interlocal services agreement between Bloomingdale and West Milford emergency services was up for adoption.

Borough administrator Ted Ehrenburg explained that the agreement is basically a mutual aid agreement authorizing Bloomingdale to provide emergency animal control services to West Milford if their own animal control officer isn't available to cover it.

Ehrenburh said the borough would incur the expense of sending someone out, and then get reimbursed by West Milford for the hours. 

Council President Linda Huntley asked what the borough charges West Milford for providing the service.

"It’s the same agreement we have with Pequannock," Ehrenburh said. "It's the contract rate we’re paying our employees—an hourly time, triple time rate." 

Huntley questioned whether an hourly rate covers the full set of costs incurred by Bloomingdale.

"What about social security?" she said. "What about benefits? What about gas for the trucks? What we pay to insure the trucks? None of that’s included. If we do any of this work for them, it’s costing us money to do the work,"

Several councilmembers agreed and discussion followed about how to determine the actual cost with everything factored in. 

The council asked the business administrator to identify the costs of every shared service, such as gas, vehicles, social security, and bring the information to be discussed at the meeting on Dec. 13.