South Essex Fire Department

The newly formed South Essex Fire Department — in operation as of July 1…

The South Orange Community Care & Justice program — designed to help South Orange reimagine the role of police in conjunction with social workers — is hitting pause as township leaders deal with staff turnover and contemplate potential adjustments to the program.

The State of New Jersey announced on July 7, that South Orange — as…

“This is a historic occasion for us and for New Jersey,” said Maplewood Mayor Dean Dafis at a special meeting on June 29 taking place concurrently with a similar meeting in South Orange. Both towns were making final amendments to a shared service agreement merging the two towns’ fire departments into one.

“The bottom line here is that this is what we hope and we anticipate is gonna be the final, very difficult year from a municipal budget standpoint as we recover from pandemic-related losses, Ida, and other things outside of our control including paying down our debt, which is always a good idea,” said Mayor Dean Dafis. 

“Tonight you have the opportunity to take an historic step to merge the Maplewood and South Orange fire departments into one to provide the highest quality fire service to the residents in each town and to maintain the proper number of firefighters and equipment and lastly to achieve economic and operational efficiencies. This is a tremendous win for our residents.”

Maplewood TC member Frank McGehee also announced that the CEO leading the joint department would be South Orange Village Administrator Adam Loehner per an agreement that is currently still in negotiations