Who in Chelsea gets to drive a city vehicle with emergency lights? Police officers and firefighters, plainly. Beyond them the answer is not written down anywhere the public can read it, and chelseamass.net is filing a public records request to find out. Here is what state law says, what the city’s own budget shows, and what we have asked for.
What the law allows
Massachusetts treats colored warning lights as a privilege tied to a specific job, not to a vehicle or a department. Under Chapter 90, Section 7E of the General Laws, blue lights are for police: official police vehicles, officers on duty with the chief’s authorization, police commissioners, medical examiners attached to a department, and vehicles carrying prisoners. Red lights are for fire service personnel, from chiefs and deputies to call firefighters and EMS members, and the statute adds two conditions. The light may be shown “only when such owner or operator is proceeding to a fire or in response to an alarm,” and it may not be mounted at all “until proper application has been made to the registrar by the head of the fire department and a written permit has been issued.” Emergency management staff, dispatchers and fire alarm technicians do not appear in the section.
Sirens are narrower still. Section 16 of the same chapter says no siren may be mounted on any vehicle except fire apparatus, ambulances, vehicles used “in official line of duty” by police or fire personnel, and vehicles owned by call firefighters or people with police powers, “unless authorized by the registrar.” So a city employee outside the police and fire departments can lawfully run lights and a siren only if the Registry of Motor Vehicles has issued a permit for that person and that vehicle. The permit is a public record.
The department in question
Chelsea’s Office of Emergency Management runs the Emergency Communications Center, where dispatchers answer 911 calls, monitor the municipal fire alarm box system and keep radio contact with police, fire, EMS and public works. Its director is Steve Staffier, its office is the emergency operations center at 45 Washington Avenue, and its fiscal 2027 budget is $1,850,934, of which $1,666,684 is personnel. It is not a small operation: the council added $135,000 to its overtime line in April and another $45,000 in June. Its dispatch function is scheduled to move to the new regional center in Revere in July 2027, and the contract for its 911 supervisors, with a retention payment tied to that transition, is before the Ways and Means subcommittee on Tuesday.
None of that tells you whether any of its employees drive a city vehicle equipped with warning lights, or on what authority. The department’s staff maintain the fire alarm system in the field, which is a reason to have a vehicle. Whether it is a reason to have lights and a siren, and whether such a vehicle goes home at night, is a policy question the city has not published an answer to.
What we asked for
The records request, under the Public Records Law, asks the city for eight things: the list of vehicles assigned to or used by the Office of Emergency Management, with the employee or position each is assigned to; any policy on take-home use, personal use, and the installation of warning lights, sirens or radios on vehicles outside the police and fire fleets; any Registry permit or other authorization for lights or sirens on an emergency management vehicle, and who issued it; the job descriptions and minimum qualifications for the office’s supervisory and dispatcher positions, including any physical, driving or training standards; a description of the emergency response duties, if any, of the fire alarm maintenance function; fuel, mileage and GPS records; any complaint or incident report about the operation of those vehicles; and the city’s outside employment policy for the office’s staff. Once it is received, the city has ten business days to respond.
Why it matters
A light bar changes how a car is driven and how other drivers react to it. State law limits who may use one because the privilege comes with the presumption that the person behind the wheel is responding to something. If Chelsea has extended that privilege to employees whose jobs are not emergency response, residents are entitled to know who decided that and under what rules. If it has not, the records will show a short list of names, and the question is closed. Either answer is worth having in writing. We will publish what the city sends.