The current blame game does not help Hamilton with its efforts to overhaul its current fire districts.
It is bad enough that Hamilton residents have to contend with cumbersome regulations when it comes to streamlining and reforming its archaic fire district system, but now it turns out that incorrect voter records are throwing another monkey wrench into the longtime effort to consolidate the districts.
Five percent of the voters in each of the nine fire districts in Hamilton must sign petitions for the township council to start the consolidation process. Now we learn that nearly 10,000 Hamilton voters are assigned to the wrong fire districts.
It's amazing that this situation has not come to light during fire district elections, when township residents have to be registered to vote on fire district budgets and officers. On second thought, fire district elections typically draw such few voters that it is conceivable that only die-hard voters with proper registration make it to the polls.
There has been a lot of finger pointing in this latest debacle.
Hamilton slices fire district budgets
Hamilton officials put the blame squarely on the Mercer County Board of Elections, which they say is responsible for keeping the records up to date. The county shot back, saying that while it is tasked with inputting and maintaining information in the state's voter database, the data itself comes from Hamilton.
Now the county election board is saying that the situation may not be resolved until after the general election in November.
The idea of consolidating the township's fire districts has been bandied about for the past quarter century, but this latest effort has shown the most promise.
The current fire district map was developed about 100 years ago when Hamilton was a much more rural township and fire protection needs were easily taken care of by volunteers who were proud of their local fire stations.
Hamilton: Errors found in voter records
But as the township grew, those fire districts were duplicating services at a hefty cost to taxpayers. Hamilton has 45 fire commissioners who draw a combined $450,000 in taxpayer-funded salaries per year. Each district has its own fire trucks and equipment and personnel. You even have situations where responding firefighters in one district have to travel much farther to answer a fire call than firefighters in a neighboring district that is actually closer.
Hamilton is now undertaking the laborious process of manually certifying petition signatures. Its time consuming and tedious work, but it appears to be the best solution to get the consolidation ball rolling.
The township is just going to have to buckle down and get the job done. The blame game is counterproductive at this point.