West Burlington City Councilman Rick Raleigh continues to oppose the allocation of more than $500,000 in federal grant funds for the city's fire department, which was the subject of a lengthy debate at an Aug. 22 meeting.
"Anything having to do with the grant I'll vote against," Raleigh said after Wednesday meeting.
Raleigh and Councilman Rod Crowner, who was absent at Wednesday evening's meeting, spoke out against language in a grant application authored by fire department Capt. Skylar Limkemann.
Limkemann's grant writing won the city's fire department $523,430 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant, awarded to the city in July. The grant award came at no matching cost to the city.
During last month's council meeting, Raleigh and Crowner accused Limkemann of lying to the federal government, citing a passage in the grant application saying West Burlington has several nursing homes and retirement communities.
Though Limkemann was able to identify three examples of such nursing homes, Raleigh and Crowner persisted, further complaining Limkemann's application seemed to imply the city council mismanaged or poorly treated the fire department in recent years.
When the SAFER grant resurfaced at Wednesday night's meeting, Raleigh voted against the two resolutions having to do with the allocation of its funds.
He said he doesn't think West Burlington has a need for the SAFER grant, adding other communities might have put the funds to better use. He also continued to take issue with how the grant application was written.
"The way that I read, and a lot of people didn't read it that way, I thought it was kind of fishy," he said.
The main purpose of the SAFER grant is to retain more firefighters, Limkemann said. In his view, keeping the city's firefighting force at a steady level has become increasingly important.
In 2011, the fire department was unable to respond to 35 calls due to lack of personnel. Limkemann said there have been similar instances this year.
The $523,430 in SAFER grant funds will help solve those issues, Limkemann said. To retain personnel, some of the grant's funds will be used to increase the wages of the fire department's 10 officers and 29 volunteer firefighters.
Despite Raleigh's nay vote and councilwoman Kara Steward's abstaining, the council approved a wage supplement plan using money from the SAFER grant.
As of this month, the total amount of SAFER grant funds allotted for this year to be used to supplement firefighter and officer pay and benefits is $79,095. That amount will be distributed on a month-to-month basis, and will be based on the employee's work hours as well as performance at calls and during training.
The maximum monthly stipend for the city's deputy chief is set at $300 a month, with the division chiefs eligible to receive up to $250 a month, and $200 a month for battalion chiefs. Captains will be able to receive a maximum of $125 a month.
Firefighters will be broken up into four tiers based on the percentage of calls they are tasked with. Tier four, which includes firefighters who work on 51 percent of calls or greater, are eligible for a $150 monthly performance based stipend. Tier three, or 30 percent to 50 percent of calls, a maximum of $100 a month. Tier two, or 10 percent to 29 percent of calls, up to $50 a month. Tier one, or firefighters who are on 1 percent to 9 percent of calls, are eligible for a $25 monthly stipend.
The three authors of the SAFER grant application also will receive a one-time stipend of $300 each.
The rest of the funds will pay for mileage costs, training class reimbursement, personal protective gear for new firefighters, and a higher education stipend for the costs of department members looking to attend college.
Grant author Limkemann was the only one who qualified for the higher education stipend, and will receive a $5000 from the grant to go towards his law education at the University of Iowa.
Copyright 2012 - The Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
