|
Retaining firefighters in Depew goal of $40,500 federal grant
The Depew Hook and Ladder Fire Company may have paved the way toward resolving a problem of retaining firefighters after being awarded a $40,500 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) program.
Pete Michaels, chief of Depew Hook and Ladder Fire Company, who made the announcement at Monday's Depew Village Board meeting, said FEMA's SAFER grant will fund development of a recruitment and retention program for the next four years, with no matching funds necessary from the village.
Michaels believes this is a big step in the right direction to helping the village's fire company, which does not have a problem recruiting firefighters, but for an unknown reason has a poor retention rate.
The money will be used to build a program that will determine why recruits drop out, then work towards resolving the issue during the fouryear period, Michaels said.
According to the Homeland Security's U.S. Fire Administration Web site, the program's ultimate goal is to enhance the grantee's ability to attain 24-hour staffing, thus assuring the community has adequate protection from fire and fire-related hazards.
The grant funds the hiring of additional firefighters for paid departments, while for volunteer firefighters, it provides a program for recruitment and retention, a more difficult concept for towns and villages that do not provide payment for services, Michaels said. He noted that most of the funds go to cities with paid firefighters, so for Depew to get this award is very important.
"We turn over firefighters too quickly and we need to find out why and turn that around," Michaels told the Times after the meeting.
Also at the meeting, the board authorized advertising for bids for new police vehicles to replace four cars in the fleet.
Mayor Joseph McIntosh was asked by Depew resident Joan Priebe if the village has considered purchas- ing a four-wheel-drive vehicle for the police in consideration of events such as that of the snowstorm of October 12-13, 2006. Police officers were forced to use their own fourwheel drive vehicles to navigate the debris and two feet of snow in the village in the aftermath of that storm.
However, McIntosh said that he and Police Chief Thomas Domino had not talked of that type of purchase when discussing replacing older police automobiles and Domino "did not indicate a need" for such an automobile.
Priebe also asked McIntosh if he had come to any conclusions about temporary storage units, a hot topic several months ago when the village attempted to create a local ordinance to restrict their use but one that has been on the back burner of late.
McIntosh said he is still struggling with the proposed ordinance's wording, if it is to be enacted at all, because he does not want companies providing these services to be restricted in a manner that would prevent them from conducting business in the village. He noted that the commercial use of these products such as Portable On Demand Storage (PODS) has been more under control and that certain restrictions on the units for residential use may be too harsh.
| 
