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Feds Award Atlantic City, Camden Grants To Rehire Firefighters
States News Service
U.S. Senators Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) today announced the Atlantic City and Camden fire departments were awarded a combined $14,835,147 in federal funding for firefighting staffing. The funding is made available through the Federal Emergency Management Agencys (FEMA) Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) program. The highly competitive SAFER grant program is designed specifically to staff departments with trained firefighters.
The cities of Atlantic City and Camden have been devastated by layoffs to their fire departments and this critical federal funding will put firefighters back on the job protecting our families and neighborhoods, said Lautenberg, Vice Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, which funds the SAFER grant program. With communities across New Jersey struggling to keep their first responders on the job, I will continue working in the Senate to ensure that federal funding for public safety in New Jersey is a priority.
Emergencies wont wait for flush budget years and we cant either," said Menendez. " Police, firefighters and first responders must be on the job in order to do their job. Atlantic City and Camden will now have the resources to keep front line firefighters protecting and serving the community.
The $14,835,147 in federal funding will be distributed as follows:
Atlantic City Fire Department - $9,726,403
Camden Fire Department - $5,108,744
The SAFER grant program provides funding directly to fire departments and volunteer firefighter organizations in order to help them increase the number of trained "front line" firefighters in their communities.
For more information about the program, please visit: http://www.firegrantsupport.com/content/html/safer/
Related
- NJ.com: Feds Provide $4M To Rehire Firefighters
- Courier-Post: Camden Gets $5.1M Grant, May Rehire Firefighters
- Press of Atlantic City: $10M Grant Could Bring Back Firefighters
Copyright 2011 States News Service
February 9, 2011
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by GARY HANSON on
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This will probably start an avalanche of requests from hundreds of cities, counties and states that have mismanaged their taxpayers monies and now are in a total denial of "their" responsibilities to provide services for which those monies were dedicated. Our US government is already in a budget crunch and this opens the back door to a huge bunch of public entities lining up at the money spout. Those in other locations, who have done a good job with tax money, get their faces rubbed in the dirt.
I don't begrudge those ff's and leo's getting their jobs back - - not for one minute. That is great if it really happens . . . I just think someone ought to challenge the mayors and council members and make them responsible for their obvious malfeasance.
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Permalink Reply by Oldman on
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They didn't have the money in the budget to keep from laying off these guys, what is going to happen when they must pick up the whole tab at the end of the grant program?
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Unfortunately Ralph,
This is exactly the reason I gave to my Chief when he approached me to write the proposal for a SAFER grant last year.
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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They didn't have the money in the budget to keep from laying off these guys, what is going to happen when they must pick up the whole tab at the end of the grant program?
The reasons for SAFER is to help weather the economic storm to be able to buy some time. As such there have been several depts which have refused SAFER for reasons from not holding their end of the bargain for the next 2 years, to wanting the force reduced so they could implement a volutneer dept (insert Uniontown, PA example). That was the point of SAFER to help with the economic times until a community can afford the proper staffing they should deserve.
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Our US government is already in a budget crunch and this opens the back door to a huge bunch of public entities lining up at the money spout.
Not really. SAFER grants are nothing new, but the rules were changed providing a two year window to help with the hiring or rehiring of personnel. There have been several communities which refused such grants and there are still many other depts that have incurred layoffs or reductions through attrition etc that still have not received a grant. Just because a dept applies does not mean they will get the grant.
FEMA actually decided to ignore the rules as set forth with SAFER last year in which those depts, like Camden, Flint, Lawrence, Orlando, etc that have laid off FF's would be considered first for SAFER, followed by depts that reduced staff through attrition and then finally those depts that were looking to hire new. There were several volunteer and combination depts that were looking for some staffing that were getting grants even before those depts that incurred layoffs. So while it may seem like because there are layoffs, there will be more lining up to the "money spout", doesn't mean they will get it.
Kind of goes into the "strings attached" a bit more here http://www.firehouse.com/news/top-headlines/safer-grant-camden-come...
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