Woodbridge Dissolves Keasbey Fire District After More than a Century of Service
A 2023 deal for a new firehouse was signed, then quietly collapsed. The developer kept buying land around the old one anyway. Here is what the record actually shows.
The Keasbey Fire District Number Four firehouse in Woodbridge Township. The township is dissolving the district and shifting its coverage to Fords Fire District Number Seven. (The Central Jerseyan)
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Chris Howell | August 13, 2026
The public hearing closed. A motion. A second. “All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it.”
That is how a fire company that has protected a corner of Woodbridge Township since 1908 legally ceased to exist on the night of August 12. Three parties tell three different stories about why.
The state says Keasbey Fire District Number Four could not staff itself safely. The fire district says it was blindsided by a process aimed at land, not safety. The township says it only tried to broker a deal between the fire district and a developer.
To understand how a fire company survives 118 years only to be voted out of existence in a matter of seconds, it helps to start three years earlier, with a piece of paper almost nobody outside a small circle in Woodbridge ever saw.
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On January 4, 2022, the Township Council directed the Planning Board to study two adjoining areas of the Keasbey section for redevelopment. One was the Keasbey 10 zone, 22.8 acres of land that includes the firehouse. A smaller parcel on Smith Street was given its own redevelopment plan that August and adopted several months later. The second industrial zone also permitted “volunteer fire companies and first aid squads.”
One thing everyone can agree on is that the developer wanted access to the firehouse site for a warehouse project and began negotiating with Keasbey’s fire commissioners over a land swap. In exchange for selling the firehouse property, the developer offered to build a new firehouse within the smaller redevelopment area down the road from the firehouse. The developer, SEI Keasbey Urban Renewal LLC, did not respond to detailed written questions.
In August 2023, Keasbey’s Board of Fire Commissioners and SEI Keasbey Urban Renewal signed a transfer agreement. It officially traded the district’s firehouse at 420 Smith Street for a new firehouse and improvements at 177 and 199 Smith Street. The agreement itself names the Board of Fire Commissioners, not the Township of Woodbridge, as the legal owner of the existing firehouse property.
The contract obligated the developer to install an emergency traffic light and generator, pre-wire the new building for township communications equipment, relocate a monument, and cover up to $25,000 in moving costs. It gave the developer 120 days to study the project before committing further.
Fords Fire District Number Seven’s firehouse in Woodbridge Township. Under the township’s plan, Fords will take over emergency response coverage for the Keasbey section once Keasbey Fire District Number Four is dissolved. (The Central Jerseyan)
No feasibility studies were conducted in that window. Instead, in February 2024, the developer proposed paying the district $95,000 to extend the deadline, but that extension was never signed. A year later, the fire district’s board voted to declare the agreement breached and ended negotiations because, it said, the developer claimed it did not have the money to extend.
Why the deal fell through is debated. Mayor McCormac said the fire district began making unreasonable demands of the developer, including for a rescue boat that no other Woodbridge fire district owned.
“That was the dealbreaker,” McCormac said in a phone interview.
However, Robert Pawol, who sits on the board of commissioners for the Keasbey fire district, said that wasn’t the case. He said the district did ask for a boat, and that the developer declined. But Pawol insisted that was not what killed the agreement. He said the district bought its own boat independently for about $15,000.
Instead, Pawol said the dealbreaker was a traffic light required on a stretch of Smith Street near the proposed new firehouse location. The signal and installation cost an estimated $500,000, far beyond what either side had budgeted.
Meanwhile, as negotiations dragged on, the developer did not sit idle. A review of Woodbridge tax records by The Central Jerseyan found that SEI Keasbey Urban Renewal LLC owns all 18 parcels within the Keasbey 10 redevelopment zone except the firehouse itself.
When asked directly about those purchases, township officials rejected any connection to the dissolution push.
“This issue with the firehouse has nothing to do with the project,” McCormac said. “If this was a land grab, why didn’t we grab it in the last three years? Because it’s not a land grab.”
The tax records tell a more complicated financial story. Starting in April 2025, two months after the agreement between the developer and fire district was declared breached, the parcel where the new firehouse was expected to be built began falling behind on its taxes. That August, eight parcels around the firehouse missed payments. By March 2026, nine additional parcels had joined them. Altogether, records show roughly $71,000 in overdue tax payments across the portfolio, a rolling pattern over about 14 months. During the same period, a related entity under the same ownership remained fully current on a separate, larger Woodbridge property.
The state’s involvement traces to June 4, 2025, when the Division of Fire Safety (DFS) first received an anonymous complaint about the district, according to the agency’s Office of Communications. That was roughly three months after the breach and a month before the township formally requested a broader review. The agency released its assessment about a year later, citing staffing shortfalls, a lapsed shared-services agreement, and the district’s status as the smallest and most expensive per capita of Woodbridge’s nine fire districts.
The council introduced a dissolution ordinance this June. It reintroduced the ordinance about a month later, acknowledging the first notice did not meet state transparency requirements. The ordinance’s text sets the firefighter placement plan at two positions to Woodbridge Fire District Number One, two to Port Reading, and four to Fords. The measure also transfers Keasbey’s property and assets to Fords rather than mandating a sale. However, its own financial justification counts on “a large surplus balance” once the firehouse is eventually sold.
Supporters of the firehouse were given their final opportunity to speak out at the August 12 meeting. Fire Chief John Manna said the volunteer company was “blindsided” by the process. Lt. Luis Montalvo, a 31-year Keasbey veteran, disputed the call volume figures in the DFS report. Former Commissioner Dwayne Jensen asked why Fords and Port Reading, which he said share the same basic staffing model, were not also scrutinized the same way as Keasbey. Pawol questioned whether the firefighter transfers actually have state Civil Service approval.
The council adopted the ordinance that night, following public comment. Councilman Howie Bauer, the sitting volunteer chief of Fords Fire Company, abstained. Come October 1, after more than a century of service, the Keasbey Fire House will cease to exist.
Editor’s note: The Central Jerseyan is free to read and supported by advertising. If you value this kind of local reporting and want to help sustain it, you can become a citizen supporter on Patreon. Your contribution helps fund continued coverage of local government, schools, and community issues.