Without changes, grant can’t be used by city firefighters

By Patricia Meade

The chief wants to lay off six firefighters and rehire them with the grant.

YOUNGSTOWN — A $632,550 federal grant awarded to the Youngstown Fire Department will have to be turned down if it can’t be amended.

The grant was announced Wednesday afternoon by U.S. Sen. George Voinovich’s office.

“Our firefighters need the proper resources to protect their communities,” Voinovich, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a news release. “I’ve urged the Department of Homeland Security to do more to support our first responders on the local level, and I’m pleased to see it’s happening.”

The award is a Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant. The goal of any SAFER grant is to enhance the ability of grantees to attain and maintain 24-hour staffing and to assure that their communities have adequate protection from fire and fire-related hazards.

Fire Chief John J. O’Neill Jr. said his department, which has 136 firefighters, would have to use the grant to hire six new ones. That, he said, is the problem, considering the city’s projected budget shortfall this year and possible layoffs.

“The problem is we can’t afford 142 firefighters. The grant pays a percentage of wages and benefits over a four-year period, and in the fifth year, we’d have to pay 100 percent to maintain those six new positions,” O’Neill. “The grant pays 90 percent wages and benefits the first year, 70 percent the second, 50 percent the third and then 30 percent the fourth.”

The chief said if the department doesn’t maintain those six positions in the fifth year it would have to repay all the grant.

To avoid that, O’Neill said he has contacted the offices of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, as well as Voinovich. The chief said he wants to see if the grant can be amended so that he could lay off six firefighters and hire them back with the grant money.

As it stands, the grant won’t allow such a deviation because it calls for six new firefighters, the chief said.

“It’s unknown if they’ll bend the rules,” he said. “If not, we have to pass on the grant.”

meade@vindy.com