Siren,
school safety debated
Belvidere considers new alarm system.
Thursday, November 18, 2004 • By SARA LEITCH •
The Express-Times
BELVIDERE -- Fires and Florida were the two main topics
of discussion at Wednesday night's school board
meeting.
Board members considered ending their use of the town's
siren system as a fire alarm, but decided they did not have
enough information about whether doing so would allow the
town to disconnect the horn.
Under state law, Belvidere's schools need to have a
direct link to a fire department or alarm company in case of
emergency. Right now, that link is an 80-year-old air siren
and pull box system with aging wires, which recently
short-circuited and caused the horn to blow at odd
hours.
Switching to an alternative system that telephones an
alarm company, which would alert local authorities, would
cost the school several thousand dollars, board secretary
Ronald Rush said, while the air horn is free to the
schools.
Installing the communicator units and dedicated phone
lines for the link to an alarm company would cost $2,000 to
$2,300, while annual monitoring costs would run about
$1,800, he said.
"This is really the modern way to do it," Rush
said.
Good Will Fire Co. president John Hosterman recently
presented the town council with two choices for the horn's
future: disconnect it completely, or rewire it and remove
the pull boxes, reducing the chance of early morning short
circuits.
Paying for a service they now get for free rubbed some
board members the wrong way.
"That's another fixed cost we're putting in that's not
for education," David Cheatham said. "It is for
safety."
Others argued that taxpayers would be relieved to be rid
of the horn.
"It's an inconvenience to a lot of people," Peter Grogan
said. "For that kind of money, I think there's a lot of
people that would be happy to have that thing go away."
Board members decided to ask councilman Hugh Farley and
a representative from the fire company to attend their next
meeting, to determine if switching the schools to an alarm
company would mean the town could switch off the horn.
The school board also discussed the bonfire that will be
part of a pep rally beginning at 5:30 p.m. Monday. Insurance
rules required the board to pass a resolution authorizing
the blaze, Rush said. The board voted unanimously for the
resolution.
A proposed high school cheerleading trip to Florida was
one of the subjects on which the board delayed a decision.
Because the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic
Association does not regulate cheerleading, the board
created its own set of guidelines to determine when
cheerleaders would be allowed to miss two days of school to
travel to the national tournament in Florida.
Those guidelines included placing first or second in a
tournament, but the nine-member team had too few
cheerleaders to compete in a recent tournament that required
a dozen members on a team, athletic director David Barr
said.
"Technically they came in second in their division, but
they had to perform as an exhibition squad," he said.
High school principal Dirk Swaneveld said the team
shouldn't be penalized for having too few members.
"They absolutely don't make the criteria as it's
written," he said. But, he added, "students take time off
for field trips and band trips."
The board decided to delay a decision on the trip until
its next meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 15.
Reporter Sara Leitch can be reached at 908-475-8044 or by
e-mail at sleitch@express-times.com.
© 2004 The Express-Times. Used with
permission.
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