Worth County, Georgia was overjoyed when Assistance to Firefighters Grants awards started rolling in for the 2003 program. In July, Gordy and Anderson City Volunteer Fire Departments each won $171,000 grants for new vehicles. In August, Scooterville was awarded the same grant. Then in November, Warwick was awarded the $171,000.
But the situation in Worth County illustrates a problem that has cropped up dozens of times in the Assistance to Firefighters Grants program (FIRE Act). According to Tom Harrington, ODP Grant Program Specialist, some departments have submitted grant applications representing stations as individual applicants while in fact they are part of the same fire department. And following the rule as written, a department that is found to be submitting more than one application will have all of those applications deemed ineligible.
The Worth County Fire Department is the recognized department in this case and they submitted an application. There are 14 other stations in the small communities of Worth County with 120 volunteers running calls out of those stations dispatched from a central 9-1-1 center. And at least 11 other applications came from those stations. According to Harrington, the grant program sees one department submitting 12 applications.
Causing some confusion, award letters went out to the Worth County stations and based on that they bought three new vehicles that are on the ground, ready to roll. Harrington said this is not the first time an award has been made which later was discovered to be ineligible. "There is no way for us to know the connection initially. For some reason this one just slipped through the cracks." Nearly 20,000 applications were submitted in the 2003 program. These should not have gone through, he said, "but we caught it and the only recourse is to cancel them."
Worth County does have a right to appeal the decision, and they have. County Clerk Nell Ford said they still have hope that the awards will be allowed. "We are growing by leaps and bounds down here," she said, and the equipment is "desperately needed". This is the third year that these applications have been submitted, Ford said. But it is the first year that they received any awards.
Within the Department of Homeland Security under which the ODP and the grant program functions, there is an arbitrator that will take the appeal under consideration. Harrington said this appeal process has resulted in overriding the grant program's decisions in the past. But it could be another month before a decision is known.
Chief Len Ford, Worth County Fire Department and County Director of Emergency Management said," They called us and told us the grants were frozen. But the trucks had been ordered. We have to wait to see what FEMA is going to do. It put us in a bad situation. If something was done wrong, you would think they would have caught it before we got this far."
In the meantime, the county is working with the Georgia Association of County Commissioners on a lease/loan program and has made a payment on the trucks. The need for better county coverage is still there, Ford said. And they are extremely hopeful that the equipment will help with a positive adjustment of their ISO rating.
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