Northwood leaders feel fortunate to get a $939,819 federal grant to fund the employment of three firefighters/paramedics, but are also concerned about how to pay for the new workers after the money runs out.
At Thursday’s meeting, council officially accepted a Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant, which was announced last month.
“It was pretty phenomenal that we got it,” said Fire Chief Joel Whitmore. “We were fortunate enough to be one of the five departments in the country to get it.”
The SAFER grants were created to provide funding directly to fire departments and volunteer firefighter interest organizations to help them increase or maintain the number of trained, front-line firefighters available in their communities.
There was some discussion about the future funding during council’s safety committee meeting, which was held before the regular council meeting.
“Funding it after the three years, where’s the funding coming?” said Councilman Dean Edwards.
Councilman Pat Huntermark, who was sitting in the audience and is not on the committee, asked if they could apply for another grant to continue the funding of the firefighters.
“Obviously, they’re not going to give you another three years to fund them,” Chief Whitmore said. “The whole idea of the grant is to get you started.”
“After that, we have to look at potential ways to fund it,” he said.
Mr. Edwards voted to move the grant approval recommendation to the full council, “with the caveat that we have to look sooner rather than later on how we’re going to finance it after the three years.”
During the full council meeting, the grant was accepted, with all in favor.
City Administrator Kevin Laughlin said the grant requires the three new firefighters to be employed within six months.
“We need to be pretty nimble with the hiring,” he said.
The three new firefighters will be in addition to three new firefighters, William Hadder, Amanda Hughes, and Noah Cornelison, who were hired Thursday.
Northwood’s commitment to the fire department and staffing was probably a main factor in the city getting the SAFER grant, Chief Whitmore said after the meeting.
“The city is invested in the fire department. They’re invested in growing it,” he said. “By the city ponying up the money to hire the three original full-time people, I think that was what put us over the top.”
The full-time firefighters will work alongside part-time staff to maintain a continuous presence of four fire and EMS personnel on duty at all times, ensuring immediate response to service calls.
Chief Whitmore said figuring out funding going forward would be a team effort, with the fire department, city administration, and council working together.
“You hate to say the word ‘levy,’ but that’s one [funding solution],” Chief Whitmore said. “The residents have been very fortunate that the entire city operation is funded right now by a 1.5 percent income tax, with no levies. And they get pretty darn good service between fire, police, streets, the rec program.”
“Things are expensive and they’re not getting cheaper, and we want to be able to continue that service and expand things,” he said. “We’ve got to come out with some way to fund it.”
In other fire business, council approved creating the position of full-time firefighter/advanced EMT.
Chief Whitmore said this new position eliminates the fire training requirement for the job.
“Now we’re just requiring that they have the EMS training, and we’ll send them to fire training,” he said. “We struggled a bit with the initial round of hiring, so that’s why we wanted to change the rules around to expand the pool a little bit more.”
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