Question On Safer Grant Stipulations On Adding Manpower

[crankshaft]

Thanks for the time



I have a question on wording in this specific paragraph:



http://www.firegrantsupport.com/safer/faq/09/


What kinds of activities are eligible for funding in SAFER? 1. Hiring of Firefighters Activity. The goal of the Hiring of Firefighters Activity is to award grants directly to volunteer, combination, and career fire departments to help them INCREASE the number of frontline, active firefighters. The goal is to assure departments have adequate personnel to respond and safely perform at incident scenes, providing protection from fire and fire-related hazards for their communities. This activity provides 2-year grants to assist fire departments by paying the salaries of newly hired firefighters or to rehire recently laid-off firefighters. Any hired firefighters must be in addition to the authorized and/or funded firefighter positions the department had at the time of application.



Im guessing firefighter activity is just referring to the hiring of frontline firefighters. But where it says the goal is to award grants to vol, combo and career depts to help increase number of frontline active firefighters. Where it says increasing the number of firefighters, would that be based on a daily basis or an overall increase. Sounds confusing but our town is going for the grant but want to increase staffing by three per shift which is great but on days where someone uses a vacation day or calls in sick those three would be used to fill spots and technically not increase staffing but only suplement staffing on certain days. And on some days there will be more then three off and increase in staffing that the grant promotes wont exaclty be happening.



My question I guess is whether this could be done, not increasing staffing by the number of positions granted through the grant all 365 days a year or would the increase have to be done daily? And on a side note we have mininum staffing in our contract of 22 per shift with the increase of three if anyone of the safer grant hires were to take off would that position need to be filled or would the "increase in staffing" rule be voided here also.

While I'm rambling, how many depts usually put in for hires for the safer grant?



Sorry for the confusion I hope what I'm asking make sense to someone. Thanks

[BCCB]

I believe the total personnel employed is the accurate count, not a daily roll call. If you have a current on-duty strength of 22 and apply for an increase of 3 to 25 on-duty, you will need to apply for 3 positions per on-duty shift. (ex. 3 shift system = 9 positions, 4 shift system = 12 positions) You may also be able to justify a 4th position to cover sick or vacation leave situations. depends on your administrations intentions, current situations and dept. needs, etc. Hope this is helpful.