Check out some of the other top stories from the month of the September in the Cherry Hill Sun.
Late in the summer of 2016, the Cherry Hill Fire Department became the first fire agency in New Jersey to become internationally accredited. The fire department received “Accredited Agency” status from the Commission on Fire Accreditation International. Only 234 fire agencies in the world had been accredited by the CFAI at the time.
In early September, the Cherry Hill Sun sat down with Cherry Hill Fire Chief Thomas Kolbe to find out how the fire department was able to reach accredited status.
“It takes a lot of work,” Kolbe said. “There’s a lot of effort that goes into it. We worked on it full-time for a two-year period.”
The fire department began the accreditation process to validate its efforts and increase transparency within the community.
“We can explain stuff to you,” Kolbe said. “But all of the information that tells you how we do our business, how we do our budget, it’s all in different places. This way, it brings it all together in a documentation type of process.”
“We wanted to do it to show the community of the value of what their taxes go to,” he added.
The process included a self-assessment based on CFAI’s standards. There was also an on-site peer review where five impartial officials from different levels of fire service and different areas of the country came to evaluate the fire department on the CFAI standards. All of this information was reviewed before CFAI awarded the accreditation to the Cherry Hill Fire Department.
Kolbe said there was a number of areas where the fire department learned it could improve. One area was fire station coverage on the west side of town. Kolbe said the fire department plans to examine possibly relocating a fire station near the area of Route 38 and Haddonfield Road to better serve that section of town.
Another area of improvement would be the reconstruction of the training building, something the fire department is already working on.
“It would definitely benefit the firefighters and EMTs here,” Kolbe said. “You can have your firefighters train while they’re in Cherry Hill and while they’re on duty.”
The fire department accreditation officially took effect at the start of September and will run for a period of five years.
Other top stories from the month of September:
Sept. 24 — Cherry Hill nonprofit is ‘Distributing Dignity’ to hundreds of women across the country
In 2009, Joanie Balderstone and Rebecca McIntire discovered a way to help those in need after making a trip to New Visions Homeless Day Center in Camden.
“We had collected a bunch of gently used business clothing because they had provided them resources to look for jobs and vocational assistance,” Balderstone said. “We thought if we provided them with this clothing, it would be helpful.”
“When we made the delivery, one of the women thanked us and then said ‘I don’t have a decent bra to wear underneath,’” Balderstone continued.
In late September, the Cherry Hill Sun visited the organization’s warehouse space, where it stores hundreds of donations to eventually send to various organizations in nine different states.
Sept. 22 — Long-time JCC member Bruce Apple to be honored with People’s Choice Award at JCC Sports Awards Dinner
In September, the Cherry Hill Sun ran a special mini-series profiling the four honorees at the 2016 Katz JCC Sports Awards Dinner. One of the honorees was Bruce Apple, an athletic trainer and physical therapist who was heavily involved in the Katz JCC for a number of years.
Apple served on the JCC board of directors for six years leading up to the JCC’s move from its old Route 70 location to its current building at the intersection of Springdale and Kresson roads.
Apple had always been around a JCC since his time growing up in Troy, N.Y. He described the JCC as a great place to meet people when he moved to the Philadelphia region.
“I pretty much lived on the basketball court,” he said.
Today, Apple is heavily involved in serving with the United States delegation at the Maccabiah Games. Apple was one of three co-chairs choosing athletes for the USA Maccabiah Golf team for the 2017 games.
Sept. 21 — Importance of communication, unity highlighted at Unitarian Universalist Church’s community and police relations forum
The forum included Cherry Hill Police Chief William Monaghan, Cherry Hill African-American Civic Association Vice President Bill McCargo, Camden County Freeholder Jonathan Young and Gloucester County Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Director Milton Hinton. The four answered questions and discussed the state of the relationship between police and community in the United States and how the police’s relations with the community is handled in Cherry Hill.
A good portion of the audience consisted of Cherry Hill police officers, many of whom attended outside of their regular shifts to hear the conversation.
“They volunteered to come out and listen and to understand,” Monaghan said.
Sept. 8 — Cherry Hill Police preps community for rollout of body-worn cameras
During the fall, all Cherry Hill police officers began wearing body-worn cameras. To prepare the community for the new technology, a meeting was held in early September.
Monaghan said the community has been supportive of the new technology in meetings with groups leading up to the rollout.
“People understand the need for it, the police officers understand the need for it and the community understands it,” Monaghan said.
Monaghan and other police officials were on hand to talk about the department’s policy for using the cameras and explain why the cameras are an important tool.
