Why I am a Firefighter for Cranberry Township! Why I Want to be Your Supervisor

Imagine that tomorrow you decided to volunteer with the Cranberry Township Volunteer Fire Company.  

You do not know the time you would be dispatched for an emergency call other than it could be from 12:01 AM to Midnight. 

Nor do you know if the call would take 30 minutes to solve (due to a false alarm) or 6 hours for a real fire. Oh by the way, you could be injured or killed in the line of duty.

Doesn't sound appealing?

Well this is what many of my fellow firefighters do every day. I personally have responded to over 1,500 emergency calls, and that is nothing compared to some of the other firefighters in our organization. 1,500 calls!

Take that example that I started with, but instead of one day you now have calls for the next 4 years, day after day! That is what our volunteer firefighters do for you.

These men and women, who are all volunteers, do this for our community every day. I am especially proud and humbled that they have elected me as the President of the Cranberry Township Volunteer Fire Company for the past five years.

I have worked hard to make our community aware of what our volunteer firefighters and ladies auxiliary do for our community. My primary concern as President is to assure our volunteers are well trained for whatever emergency they face and that they get back home safely to their families. 

As President of the Cranberry Township Volunteer Fire Company, I am responsible for the bottom-line budget, for writing and obtaining grants, and for assuring that our volunteers have the right equipment to handle any emergency within Cranberry.

I also coordinate recruiting of new members to train to be the next generation of firefighters. While volunteer firefighter membership statewide is decreasing, Cranberry Township is the exception.

The main reason our ranks are growing is that someone who is interested in joining our company has the opportunity for professional training. Their sole responsibility is to focus on training so they will be able to handle emergencies for our community.

For 95 percent of the other fire companies in the state, they must depend on donations from local municipalities, businesses, and residents to function.  Again, imagine that you are a volunteer firefighter who was out on a call at 2 AM, then expected to hold out a boot in front of a grocery store to solicit donations to fill the gas tanks.

Cranberry Township is one of the few municipalities that had the vision to dedicate funding to pay the operational and capital costs of a volunteer fire company. As a result Cranberry Township residents get a professional volunteer fire company for a fraction of the cost compared to those communities that have paid, fulltime firefighters.

The average family pays about $40/year for fire protection but gets back four times that in services and response.  Along with a growing volunteer department….

That is why I want to be a Township Supervisor. 

It is not by chance that Cranberry is ranked the Best Place in the Pennsylvania to raise a Kid.  Three beautiful parks, a swimming pool, walking and bike trails did not just magically happen.  

The expansion of 8,500 new jobs, 400 businesses and another 4,500 new residents in the last 10 years that resulted in $6 billion of NEW economic impact to our local area is the result of thoughtful planning by decades of township supervisors and the professional management and staff that were hired. 

Many communities day-to-day operations are run by their elected leaders. Thirty years ago, Cranberry Township supervisors made the bold decision to hire professional staff to run day-to-day operations.

These people are trained in their craft to offer the best solutions, ideas and services just like a business would do. How many businesses elect management staff to run day-to-day operations?  It sounds silly, but again that is what many communities do.

I support Cranberry Township’s Manager/council style government, and it is the one decision, in my opinion, that has led Cranberry Township to its success, and to hold one of the highest financial ratings by Moody Financial Services.

Over 89 percent of the residents in the last survey rated living in Cranberry a positive experience and the services received as very favorable to favorable. 

From the sports associations for baseball, soccer, football and lacrosse, to the Senior Center, or Camp Cranberry for all the kids, our safe neighborhoods due to our trained police and firefighters, or our investments to keep our roads in good shape and clean from snow and ice,  and much more there is something here for everyone to enjoy. 

Cranberry Township is a great place to live, work and play.  

I feel that I am uniquely qualified to be your Township Supervisor. I have lived here for 20 years with my wife Karen and my two children who both attend Seneca Valley.  I have a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration/Financial Planning from Grove City College. I also have 24 years of business experience, including 10 years of hands-on accounting experience, with two years as a Controller for a publicly held company, six years of information technology consulting with global enterprise software companies including J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft and Oracle, and the last eight years in the information technology department of L. B. Foster.

I am sincere when I say that I want to continue to serve the residents of Cranberry Township to make our community an attractive and safe place to live for our residents. 

My wife and I chose to move to Cranberry Township 20 years ago because we believed that the Township was headed in the right direction then, and I believe we are on the right path now. 

Since we moved to the Township, our community has been fortunate to have strong leadership and good planning.  I want to continue to make sure that Cranberry Township continues on the right path as outlined in the Cranberry Plan.

Thank you for your attention, and I humbly ask that you consider me with your vote on May 21.