The Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant is not a new program. In fact, City Council declined a SAFER award of $578,242 in 2008 that would have hired six new firefighters. However, the grant guidelines were much different at the time, and the city leaders less sure of the increasing income that would be required in the waning years of the grant to fund those added positions.
The original grant request in 2007 asked for six firefighters in order to add one person at each shift at both city fire stations. This was to better comply with industry safety and response standards. The original program was funded on a five-year schedule and the federal funding declined to zero by year five.
The current request is slimmed down in all respects.
City staff sought permission to request funding for up to three positions, and the revamped grant is for three years. Using stimulus funding, the federal government has redone SAFER to be a three-year program with 100 percent funding for the first two years and zero in year three. The grant-accepting entity would be responsible for funding the personnel and retaining them in year three. The cost of wages and benefits for three firefighters for one year is approximately $116,000.
New City Manager Jeff Shacker said he asked Fire Chief Keith Minick to come up with a “creative solution” to achieving satisfactory staffing levels, while sticking to the three firefighter cap. Lowering the number of personnel requested combined with a brightened economic picture due to development at the I-26/Highway 219 interchange and more expected seemed to turn the case for council.
Council Foster Senn pointed out that the Love’s Truck Stop and the Holiday Inn Express at the interchange are “off to a good start,” adding that when the city annexed that area, the “Catch-22 is, we said those would be well-covered with police and fire.”
The city projects earning $235,000 in new money from hospitality and accommodations tax collections, property taxes and business license fees from the two businesses in the fiscal year 2010-2011. Shacker proposed putting some of that new revenue toward funding the firefighter positions beginning in fiscal year 2011-2012 when the SAFER grant would stop footing the bill.
Mayor Ed Kyzer expressed hesitancy to spend hospitality and accommodations tax monies on programs that are not tourism-related. When the two-cent tax was added citywide, tourism was the only purpose it could be collected for, although state law has since changed allowing up to 20 percent of collections to be spent on other government functions.
“I just have a hard time wanting to spend accommodations income on public safety,” Kyzer explained.
But ultimately, council voted unanimously to allow city staff to apply for the grant. It is due to the federal government by Dec. 18. News of whether the grant request was successful should come in the spring at which point the council will decide whether to accept it or not.
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