An awful example comes from southeast of us, down in New Jersey. Fieldsboro is a town of less than a thousand located below Trenton, just off US 295 and just across the border from Pennsylvania. As I write, I'm looking at a reprint from an area paper there. The headline reads, "Fieldsboro sues fire company for hall, equipment." Here's how the story opens:

"Fieldsboro has sued its local fire company, demanding the company relinquish its building and fire equipment to the borough and open its financial records for review. The fire chief is fighting back, saying the company is a private club and the borough has no claim to any of its property." What occasioned this suit (and all its related court expenses) is the fire department's recent sale of its firehouse for $115,000. Fieldsboro mayor Edward Tyler was outraged, saying "citizens helped fund the company for years through their donations."

For his part, fire chief Anthony Pagliocca "calls the dispute nothing but a 'personal vendetta' ... Pagliocca said the company is a private club and its members pay for everything themselves..." In face of the mayor's demand for disclosure of just how these finances work, "Pagliocca said that the borough has no right to demand company records. 'It's none of their business,' he said."

This wild situation follows on a borough decision in 1996 to remove Fieldsboro Fire Department as its official firefighting unit. "As a result, the company has not responded to calls in the borough for almost a decade," and Fieldsboro pays for fire protection from neighboring Bordentown City. But, having fired its fire department in 1996, Fieldsboro didn't take the next painful but necessary step: claiming as its own the department's building and equipment.

As a result, the disaffected department still uses the firehouse and trucks. And though it no longer serves the donors who paid for them, the department rushes the trucks to fight fires elsewhere, even crossing the state border to douse blazes in Pennsylvania.

For almost ten years, Fieldsboro chose to ignore this odd situation-until the company sold its building. Then, far too late, the town sued to reclaim property that belongs, not to the firemen, but to the community that paid for it. Oh, my. Here comes a long and expensive court case.

Well, that's Fieldsboro. Now, what about us?

At their last Mad Hatter's Tea Party, the Fly Creek District Board got wrenched off its course toward normality by an insane, illegal double shuffle. First, Dean Colby and Julie Pernat claimed, over Mark Weir's objections, that the Board, now reduced by resignations to three members, could act on the basis of majority vote and not unanimous decision. Their authority for this was Syracuse lawyer Brad Pinsky, who continues to haunt local skies, perhaps drawn by the smell of decay.

Having falsely claimed the authority, Colby and Pernat then voted, over Weir's protests, to appoint a new Board member to serve out a vacant term. Their appointment, of course, was one of their own: Colby's wife Yvonne, who is also the fire chief's daughter. Bad enough, but worst was to come. Two more things happened of disastrous significance to the rest of us.

First, over Weir's further protests, Colby, Pernat, and Colby signed an agreement put before them by Pinsky, petitioning that the fire department be made a free-standing, non-profit organization. Second, with his smarmy lawyer at his side, Fire Chief George Chandler went into the Town Board and asked that the Fire District Board be abolished. If this doesn't happen, he added, all the firemen will quit.

Did somebody say, "Fieldsboro'?

Town Board Supervisor Tom Breiten told Chandler that such a momentous change would require a community referendum: owners of 51 percent of the total property values inside the District would have to vote for it. And that's why the chief is out circulating that petition. Please, don't think of touching your pen to the paper.

The fire chief will argue that, given all the recent controversy, we'd be better off without a district board. But, friends, the problems were not caused by having a supervisory board. Such boards exist in our state to keep Fieldsboro nightmares from happening.

The problems have not come from having a fire board, but from having poor board members-people who have been little more than sock puppets manipulated by one strong-willed man.

So don't vote to abolish the Fire District Board. Vote, come regular elections, to clean it up.

Jim Atwell lives in and views life from Fly Creek.