Police Commission Chairman Paul Mangiafico told commission members this week he expects that the panel will not receive a formal traffic report on the Newtown Hook & Ladder Volunteer Fire Company’s plans to build a new firehouse at 12 Church Hill Road, although the commission has urged that such a report be submitted for its review.

The chairman said February 3 he considers the failure to submit such a report a mistake which has serious implications, noting that the commission in the past has received for review traffic studies for various other development projects. The commission serves as the local traffic authority.

“Absent a [firehouse] traffic study, we’re faced with a dilemma,” Mr Mangiafico said.

“My feeling is we will not see a traffic study” submitted on the firehouse project, he said.

In December, the Borough Zoning Commission (BZC) approved the fire company’s plans to construct an approximately 16,000-square-foot firehouse on a 3.16-acre site on the south side of Church Hill Road, across that street from Wendover Road. BZC members said then that a formal traffic study was not required for the firehouse project.

Later that month, when volunteer fire company members attended a Police Commission session, they told Police Commission members that town officials had told them that no traffic study was needed for the project.

But in January, Mr Mangiafico vowed to keep the firehouse traffic study item on the Police Commission’s monthly meeting agendas until the matter was resolved.

Commission member Brian Budd said the presence of a firehouse at 12 Church Hill Road would have a traffic impact on Church Hill Road. Commission member Virgil Procaccini, Jr, concurred.

Mr Mangiafico said, “We have no authority to say this [firehouse] project cannot be done.”

But, he added, it is difficult to understand how fire trucks would be easily able to exit the firehouse driveway at Church Hill Road during certain times of the day when there is traffic congestion on Church Hill Road.

Without the benefit of a traffic study, the Police Commission is at a loss to formally review the traffic implications of the firehouse project, Mr Mangiafico said.

Police Commission members then voted to remove the firehouse traffic report item from their agenda, when considering that no traffic report has been received.

Commission member Joel Faxon said that he is not comfortable voting to support or to oppose the firehouse project without basing such a decision on a formal traffic report.

In a January 20 letter to the Police Commission, Borough Warden James Gaston wrote that based on the borough attorney’s legal opinion, the BZC’s December approval of the firehouse project “is resolved and Hook & Ladder is fully authorized to move forward with their project.”

“Further involvement by the Police Commission would be viewed as an effort to usurp the powers of the Borough Zoning Commission,” Mr Gaston wrote.

Mr Gaston also is a town selectman.

Hook & Ladder plans to build a new firehouse to replace the existing, town-owned firehouse that it occupies at 45 Main Street behind Edmond Town Hall. The overall cost of the new firehouse, which Hook & Ladder would own, is unclear. The town has agreed to provide a $1.5 million subsidy for the firehouse project.

Each of the four other local volunteer fire companies — Dodgingtown, Hawleyville, Sandy Hook, and Botsford — own their firehouses.