Plant City Fire Rescue was awarded a highly competitive grant, which will help the city hire new firefighters to help with the opening of Fire Station Three.
FEMA’s Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Grant (SAFER) totals $595,737 and is awarded through the Department of Homeland Security. The funding helps employ three new firefighters for three years. The first two years the grant covers 75% of their salaries and the last year it will cover 35% of their salaries. The city is required to contribute a matching cost in the amount of $228,364.
“When I saw that notification come in that we had received the grant I was just ecstatic,” Fire Chief David Burnett said. “It saves the city quite a bit of money. There was a lot of time we put into it to get through the grant process with DHS. It is very competitive, very competitive.”
Because Plant City is opening a new station, improving the level of services throughout the entire
city and already committed to hiring new staff, Burnett said they were able to have a fighting chance at being selected as the recipient.
The overall growth throughout the city also helped easily highlight the need for a thriving Fire Department in Plant City. The commercial growth on the east side of town, as well as the steadily increasing population and the data available to highlight the future of the city, made it clear Plant City was the perfect candidate for new staff.
Burnett expressed his joy and surprise at being selected, saying they knew it was a long shot because of the extremely competitive nature of the grant. The first thing he did upon receiving the good news was send it to City Manager Bill McDaniel.
“They’ve applied in the past, but we never got it as far as I know,” McDaniel said. “We applied thinking we probably wouldn’t get it, but we were glad to. We budgeted six (firefighters) in Fire Station Three and we were going to have to move some around from Fire Station One and Two and now we won’t have to do that. We’ll be able to take the budgeted six, plus the grant three and we’ll have our full team.”
The first week of March the new firefighters have to be working. Initially, the firefighters will be within the existing staffing to get them trained. Burnett said some of the new hires may find themselves at Fire Station Three while others may remain in one of the other two units.
The new station is estimated to open in July 2019 and when fully staffed it will have three personnel working each 24-hour shifts, with a total of three shifts, to staff one fire engine. A fire engine includes a captain, driver and a firefighter/paramedic.
The city already planned to hire six new firefighters to prepare for the opening of Fire Station Three. Of those, three will be funded using the SAFER grant and the additional three positions can be added in the 2019-2020 budget to so there will be nine firefighters, which is full staffing level, for the new fiscal year.
The Fire Department received a different FEMA grant for an exhaust system approximately a year ago, which Burnett said they have “really been trying to use to improve the services.”
“We try to do what we can and pursue these types of aid,” Burnett said. “We’re just really happy.”