Faced with continued questions from members of the Vera Cruz Fire Department, Upper Milford supervisors last week decided to postpone a vote on the proposed grant of $50,000 to encourage the departments to undertake more training, certification and safety measures.

The $50,000 will remain in the 2017 budget for now, but Solicitor Marc Fisher advised supervisors they will have to decide what to do with it before final passage of the budget.

At the Dec. 1 supervisors meeting, Emily Fair of the Vera Cruz Fire Department read a lengthy statement, which she said reflected her own opinion, not that of the department. She said calling the grant an incentive was not really accurate, because it involved no incentives for the firefighters themselves.

It would be a “morale disaster,” she said.

“Our department is not anti-physical or anti-training,” she said, but suggested the grant, which would provide money for annual physicals and for certifying more firefighters as vehicle rescue technicians, represented “a vehicle [for supervisors] to micro-manage the fire departments.”

She suggested putting the $50,000 into more equipment and scheduling one or two meetings a year between supervisors and the two departments to discuss goals and other issues.

She said more open communication between supervisors and the fire departments is still needed.

Jason Tapler of Vera Cruz, who also said he was speaking as an individual, also suggested the money would be better used to buy more equipment, and asked why, if supervisors want better communication with the fire departments, the fire company steering committee was discontinued. He said if committee members felt the meetings were too time-consuming, they could have been scheduled quarterly instead of monthly.

Supervisors Chairman George DeVault called the grant proposal “a place to start,” but said, “Emily and Jason made some constructive comments [and]….. we still have an awful lot to hash out.”

“Let’s put this on hold,” Supervisor Robert Sentner suggested.

In other action, supervisors heard a complaint from Mr. and Mrs. Paul Lind of Indian Creek Road about a neighbor shooting his gun so close to their house that one bullet went through their wall and hit a TV in the room.

In a letter to the board Mr. Lind said this was a dangerous situation and urged supervisors to come up with some kind of recommendations for residents using guns on their property. He said he had spoken to state police, who interviewed two neighbors, both of whom said they hadn’t heard anything on the date of the incident.

He also spoke to Zoning Officer Alan Brokate, who told him there is no township ordinance related to the use of guns.

Sentner said the state game laws require hunters to be at least 150 yards away from any occupied building, but he wasn’t sure that applied to other uses of guns.

Supervisors said they didn’t know how enforceable any regulation would be, but agreed to look into it.

Audience member James Krippe said he had a similar issue near his property. He called the game commission and they set up a camera which eventually identified the culprit.