MORE THAN 100 FIREFIGHTERS GATHERED IN RANDOLPH, VERMONT, Saturday morning for a 2-hour town hall-style meeting with U. S. Fire Administrator Greg Cade.
The meeting was organized by U. S. Senator Bernie Sanders to provide a direct dialogue between the USFA and Vermont’s firefighters.
During the very productive session that was organized in a Q & A format, the attendees learned something about how the federal government works. The Rutland Herald reports:
Gordon Smith, chief of the Johnson Volunteer Fire Department, told Cade he was perplexed none of (the grant) money came his way in the wake of a fire that destroyed the local fire station, totaled two trucks and sidelined the rest of the fleet for several months nearly four years ago.
Smith said he has been applying for a $275,000 grant to pay for a new fire engine since a month after the February 2004 only to be turned down on a regular basis.
Smith said he was stumped by a federal finding the department in Johnson hadn’t adequately demonstrated a “need” and frustrated by a time-consuming grant application process that hasn’t provided the assistance he’d hoped.
“It’s hard for one to imagine if a department loses all their vehicles they aren’t in ‘need,’” Senator Sanders said, bristling at the suggestion that Smith’s applications might not have survived the computer screening process that is used to narrow the field of funding requests.
“We want common sense to prevail,” he said. “If a fire department doesn’t have any equipment it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to know they have a ‘need.’”
Yep, that’s the feds for you. But overall the meeting was very productive and it is worth your time to read the entire report from the Rutland Herald HERE.
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