Amanda Glensky

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They have pledged to help the community around the clock, 365 days a year. So, the local emergency responders, crises don’t hold off because of a holiday.

While most are celebrating the season with their families, the volunteers and officers of the fire companies and police department of Springfield Township will either be working or on call, just as they were for Thanksgiving and other holidays throughout the year.

As Don Sirianni, deputy chief of the Oreland Fire Co., said, “Fire doesn’t take a holiday.”

For the Oreland, Flourtown and Wyndmoor fire companies and the Springfield Township Police Department, holiday operations are no different from everyday preparedness.

The Springfield Township Police Department remains regularly staffed over the holidays and with undiminished services, just like any other day, said Cpl. Lee Allen, president of the Springfield Police Association.

Fire Chief George Wilmot of the Flourtown Fire Co. said no person is at the station on a regular basis because it’s completely staffed by volunteers.

But he always has a good idea of how many volunteers will be in town at a given time, and he knows who will be out of town, which stays true during the holidays, he said.

But they also have back up.

“The three companies in Springfield rely on each other,” Wilmot said.

The other Springfield fire companies, each made up of volunteers, are also constantly keeping track of who is available in case of emergencies, volunteers said.

Volunteers do not plan their holiday celebrations around whether they might get called in for duty.

Being a firefighter means one might have to excuse him- or herself from holiday dinner with the family, Sirianni said.

“It gets in your blood. If you’re around, you go,” he said. “Neighbors helping neighbors is the way we look at it.”

Calls are not more common over the holidays than at other times of the year, volunteers said. But they have certainly occurred.

John Fleming, volunteer firefighter and EMT of the Wyndmoor Fire Co., said the company has come out on Thanksgiving to respond to oven fires and last year arrived to extinguish a Christmas tree fire just a few days before Dec. 25.

The Flourtown Fire Co. has also responded in the past to calls on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Wilmot said.

The Oreland Fire Co. had a three-year streak in which volunteers responded to serious fires on Christmas Eve, Sirianni said.

For these groups, the holiday season also means celebrating among the families of fellow members and reaching outward to spread some cheer as well.

For the Oreland Fire Co., December means decorating the town for the holiday season, an effort expanded this year to include the Springfield Rotary, Oreland Lions and Flourtown Fire Co. to deck the streetlights of Springfield.

For Flourtown and Wyndmoor volunteers, the holiday season means driving Santa Claus on a fire truck. Flourtown firefighters make these runs twice during the week of Christmas — once in Erdenheim and again in Flourtown — and give candy canes to the children, which they have been doing for about 50 years, Wilmot said.

Wyndmoor volunteers have begun a tradition in which they — and Santa — bring gifts to the Stenton Family Manor, a homeless shelter in Philadelphia. It started began last December when a basement flooded and ruined gifts meant for these families. The company delivered toys and brought Santa to the shelter, Fleming said.

Members have also been working with United Cerebral Palsy organization for 12 years and have done work with the Ronald McDonald House, he said.

Combined, the three fire companies will have answered about 800 calls by the end of this year, according to numbers provided by the volunteers contacted.

Among some of this year’s notable events, the Wyndmoor and Flourtown companies received the Golden Pin Award from Holmatro, a rescue tools company, which recognized them for saving a life at a vehicle rescue scene, Wilmot said.

A driver crashed on Bethlehem Pike the beginning of 2009, and responders had to extract him from the vehicle, he said.

This year, the Wyndmoor Fire Co. spent hours on vehicle, water, ice, high-angle and confined-space rescues, hazardous materials containment, emergency medical services and police assists, Fleming said.

In March, Wyndmoor and Oreland firefighters spent more than four and a half hours extinguishing a structure fire on Camp Hill Road, according to an e-mail from Fleming.

In August, over a seven-hour period, Wyndmoor and Flourtown volunteers, along with the nearby Barren Hill Fire Co., completed six flood-related responses, including vehicle rescues and hazmat investigation, he wrote.

Wyndmoor also has a MEDPOD truck, which contains equipment for a mass- casualty accident, which members used in August when the power went out at a health care facility.

The fire companies are always looking for more volunteers to help them serve the township.

The police officers in the township are also active in the community. The police association, an 11-year-old group that comprises both active and retired officers, is separate from the police department.

Members provide services throughout the year, such as renting a truck for shredding papers and providing the service free to residents every spring, Allen said.

The association also sponsors youth sports leagues in the township, offers a $1,000 scholarship to graduating seniors, and donates to charitable organizations like the Women’s Center of Montgomery County and Mainline Animal Rescue.

“We wish everybody a happy holiday. Be fire safe and fire conscious — not only during holidays but during the entire year,” Wilmot said. “We’re always trying to think of the safety of the community and trying to make it a safer place for all of us.”

Classmates called him “Truth” during his poetry slam days at Cheltenham High School. When he began to rap, emerging artist Due Truth added the “Due” to his nickname to reflect his passion to restore hip-hop to its golden days, a feat he says is due.

Due Truth, otherwise known as Marcus Anderson, said his music represents “intelligence in entertainment,” a realization of his aim to challenge listeners through his lyrics while laying down a dance-worthy beat.

“It’s what they’ve been hearing — they just haven’t heard it. It’s where the hip-hop should be. It takes you right back to your ’95s, your ’96s, your ’97s, you know, when everything was all good and the people who were best at their craft were the ones who made it,” he said.

“It wasn’t about what you wore, what your swag was and all that … it was about the feelings you could convey with your music.”

The Glenside resident’s premier album, “Evolution,” is set to hit stores Nov. 27, and he will make an appearance at Hibbert’s INC in Glenside on Friday, Dec. 4, at 6 p.m., to help promote his album.

The tracks on “Evolution,” with its single “Fresh to Death,” are reminiscent of some of the more progressive rappers, like Common, but at the same time, he said it has the same entertainment value of artists Jay-Z or Nas.

The album is his personal attempt to help hip-hop evolve to the next step because “if it didn’t evolve, then it would just die, and I don’t believe hip-hop is dead at all,” he said.

“My inspiration for the album is actually how hip-hop is right now. It’s far from what I remember it being in the late ’80s going into the ’90s-era hip-hop. It seems as though it’s greatly misdirected. And the focus has gotten out of having real skill or real rapping prowess,” he said.

“Evolution” is about being lost and misdirected; it’s also about looking at common experiences through the lens of lessons learned in the past, and its lyrics offer recourse instead of complaints, he said.

Musically, the album borrows from jazz, which is perhaps most evident in the flute track for “Go, ” a song about the desire to get away for a moment when life gets tough.

There’s a history behind this influence. When Due Truth began rapping, he used to freestyle during jam sessions with a jazz band.

He also values harmony and incorporates it into his music.

He wasn’t always so focused on hip-hop — it’s something he fell into.

Due Truth was born in Roxborough and moved to Montgomery County when he was 11 years old.

The 2006 Cheltenham High School graduate started out doing spoken word competitions in high school. He won a poetry contest during his senior year.

“Doing spoken word is definitely where it’s all rooted. I never really grew up wanting to be a rapper. I got really good at spoken word and I just found my way into it,” he said.

He hopes to use this album as a springboard to more opportunities. Once the album comes out, he’s hoping to do some shows, get a tour together and release a second album in the future.

Due Truth’s music is online at www.facebook.com/duetruth2009 and at www.reverbnation.com/duetruth.

To those who don’t see the juvenile justice system every day, it can seem pretty black and white: The bad children go to jail.

But it’s not that simple, said Sandra Simkins of Wyndmoor.

Her new book, “When Kids Get Arrested: What Every Adult Should Know,” attempts to shed light on the juvenile justice system, namely that it’s more serious than one might think.

“I’m trying to reach out to parents, coaches, church leaders, school officials and anybody who works with kids,” said Simkins, associate clinical professor at the Rutgers School of Law in Camden and co-director of the school’s Children’s Justice Clinic.

Simkins co-directs the Northeast Region Juvenile Defender Center, where she gives consults with and trains children’s advocates in surrounding states.

She is also a former assistant chief of the juvenile unit in the Defender Association of Philadelphia.

Frequently, she has received phone calls from parents who felt lost when their children were arrested, she said, and she wanted to make information available to them in her book.

“Over and over I’ve seen

parents become very confused by the juvenile court process and not know where to turn,” she said.

It is important that parents and children understand their rights and the system, because the manner in which a child’s case is handled largely influences the outcome, she said.

Simkins has seen two children charged with the same offense, but their cases had radically different outcomes.

Her major tips for parents are not to waive their child’s right to a lawyer and not to let children talk to the police without one.

“Parents frequently encourage children to waive the right to a lawyer, and by doing that it always makes it worse for the kid,” she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted this right to children, who have to be 10 to be arrested in Pennsylvania, she added.

Parents also need to understand that what happens in the juvenile justice system can severely affect a child’s future, contrary to the assumption that juvenile court may be easy on children.

The system is more punitive today than it was 15 years ago, when a child could get arrested and then have his “slate wiped clean,” Simkins said.

“Now, if a kid gets arrested, there are long-range consequences that go into adulthood,” she added.

For example, a child’s record of indiscretion may disqualify him from joining the military or receiving college loans, she said. The “zero tolerance” policy adapted by many schools is also significant because it brings many more children into the juvenile justice system, and guidance counselors and school officials should be aware of what happens when a child is arrested, she said.

The “school to prison pipeline” is something she discusses in the book because she wants to educate parents to make smart legal choices for their children, she added.

According to Simkins, everything goes downhill when a child gets involved in the juvenile justice system.

Simkins first became interested in this subject while working at the public defender’s office in Philadelphia, particularly working with girls.

“Girls that ended up in the juvenile justice systems always had a really tragic background,” she said.

Ninety percent of girls she worked with suffered abuse in their lives and landed in the juvenile justice system because they got into a fight with someone at school or at home, Simkins said.

Everything got worse when they entered the system, she said.

“Seeing that the system was often unable to make it better and often made it worse made me want to do more and make this my career,” she said.

Those who often end up in the system are poor, don’t have parents or have special needs, she said.

”I like being a voice for those kids,” she said.

Millions of children get arrested every year, she added.

“One out of three children of color is going to spend some time on probation or parole or prison in their lifetimes. One out of three,” she said, adding that the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world.

Simkins said her goal was to take what she learned in Philadelphia, a city with fantastic organizations like the Juvenile Law Center, and write a book with a national scope.

“The attorneys in the public defender’s office in Philadelphia are outstanding. Not everybody has that,” she said.

This is Simkins first book, and it was exciting for her that her daughters could watch her go through the process of having an idea, writing a chapter and then incorporating revisions, she said.

She has lived in Wyndmoor for eight years and has a “really supportive husband” and two daughters, 10 and 12, who attend Springfield Township schools.

Springfield Township residents will see an increase of more than $80 in their sewer tax next year but no increase in township property taxes or refuse charges, according to a proposed 2010 township budget presented by the board of commissioners Nov. 11.

Under the proposed budget, a household with a property assessed at the township average of $175,400 will pay $591.10 in township real estate taxes next year. This is the same as in the three previous years, according to the commissioners’ summary.

Springfield homes will see an average increase of $87.24 on the sanitary sewer rental fee tax, a change largely due to an increase in the sewer charge Springfield pays to Philadelphia for sanitary sewer conveyance and treatment.

Last year, Philadelphia raised sewer taxes 37 percent to meet federal water regulations, but the increase was not fully reflected on the 2009 budget because the commissioners covered about 68 percent of it by dipping into its sanitary sewer reserve fund.

These sewer fees are expected to increase another 22 percent in 2010, and the cost will be passed on to the households that use the municipal sewer system, commissioners said.

Homes with their own septic systems will not be affected by the new sewage fees, board President Jeff Harbison said

The proposed 2010 budget is about $17.3 million, an increase of about 0.3 percent from in 2009.

In addition to sewer fees, changes in the 2010 budget reflect contractual increases in salary and employee benefits, utility expenses and the use of capital reserve funds for the purchase of equipment and special projects including storm-water management.

Residents will continue to pay for sanitary sewer service and refuse collection and disposal through separate fees.

Springfield residents can comment on the budget at public meetings Dec. 9 and 16 at 8 p.m. in the township building.

The board of commissioners is scheduled a vote on the budget Dec. 16.