Despite the opposition of another Great Neck mayor, the Village of Great Neck Plaza Board of Trustees approved a new contract with the Vigilant Fire Department last Wednesday that calls for a 6 percent increase over last year.
Budgeting for fire protection saw an increase from $799,499 in 2019 to $855,119 in 2020. Ambulance and other emergency services Vigilant provides increased from $131,258 to $137,801 this year.
In total, the Vigilant contract increased from $930,757 in 2019 to $992,920 this year.
Village Deputy Mayor Ted Rosen, who led the public meeting in the absence of Mayor Jean Celender, touted the work Vigilant has conducted over the past year and spoke for the board when he made the motion to approve the budget.
“We salute the Vigilant Fire Company as they have many men and women who perform tremendous service for us,” Rosen said during the meeting. “We support them and appreciate them working with us over the years.”
Prior to the adoption of the contract, Great Neck Estates Mayor William Warner criticized Vigilant for not meeting with officials from other villages and their failure to explain the increase in cost over last year’s pact.
“There was never a meeting between the Vigilant board and the affected villages to discuss this contract,” Warner said. “I find it to not be representative, and Vigilant took a step they didn’t have to take and shouldn’t have taken without consulting with the taxpayers who pay the bill.”
The contract is presented each year to the municipalities that the department services. Vigilant provides fire protection to Great Neck Estates and Kensington along with parts of Great Neck Plaza and Thomaston. Emergency services are also provided to Great Neck territories that lie north of the Long Island Railroad.
Warner said the contract was only recently presented to him and said he was not interested in holding a public hearing until a further explanation from Vigilant representatives.
“I didn’t even have a public hearing on this contract at our last meeting,” Warner said. I’m not interested in passing [the contract] or talking about it until Vigilant presents their case for making this six-percent increase.”
Warner said he appreciates the work Vigilant has done for the Great Neck peninsula over the years and noted the department has been fiscally responsible in the past.
“What I want, and what I want to provide the residents of [Great Neck Estates] with, are where the specific increases are and why they are in place,” Warner said.
Warner also noted that the deadline for approval of village budgets for Great Neck Estates and Great Neck Plaza is different. The deadline for Great Neck Plaza to approve its budget is March 1, while Great Neck Estates has until June 1.
“The gun is to your head on this one, and I understand that,” Warner said.
According to Rosen, a previous meeting between Vigilant and the villages was previously scheduled, that meeting was canceled and has not yet been rescheduled.
Rosen said he hopes that more “substantive dialogues” between the villages and Vigilant will take place going forward. Rosen also said he looks forward to continuing to work with Vigilant to maintain fiscal responsibility, something he said Plaza Mayor Jean Celender has done in the past.
“In a perfect world, we would sit down and have that meeting and really negotiate,” Rosen said. “I can’t say it’s been that way in recent years, but we salute Vigilant and its members as they perform tremendous service for us and other villages.
The village budget for the fiscal year beginning on March 1 and ending on Feb. 28, 2021, was approved on Jan. 28 for a total of $6,479,667.
Thomaston Mayor Steven Weinberg, whose village also has a March 1 deadline for budget approval said in a phone interview a public hearing for the contract will continue on March 12, where he hopes representatives from Vigilant will be in attendance.
“We have questions surrounding the contract increases, and we are hoping that this public hearing will answer them,” Weinberg said.
He said Thomaston has already accommodated for the increases Vigilant proposed and will lower the budget if necessary after the public hearing.
Village of Kensington Mayor Susan Lopatkin said in an email the contract was not approved for the village and is tabled for further discussion.
She also said an overview of the contract was not presented by any Vigilant members but said Vigilant’s Board of Trustees Chairman David Weiss told her the increased figures were salary-based.
“We had already passed our budget at our January board meeting before we received the vigilant contract since we are a March village,” Lopatkin said in an email. “We factored in a 1 percent increase as had been the case for many previous years and therefore we will need to pay those amounts for this year.”
Efforts to reach a Vigilant representative to discuss the contract were unavailing.
