Give Congressman Gary Peters Credit.
Original Sponsor of BillReauthorization of the assistance to Firefighters grant program Administrative Costs - Maximum of three percent of appropriated funds for administrative costs Remaining 97% to be distributed accordingly - Combination Fire Department - 25%
- Career Fire Departments - 25%
- Volunteer Fire Departments - 25%
- Others - 25%
- 10% minimum - Prevention/Firefighter Safety/Research (includes Centers of Excellence)
- 2% maximum - Volunteer non-fire service EMS and Rescue
- 2% maximum - Fire Service Training Academies
- 10% - competitive between Volunteer, Career, and Combination departments
Match - 5% for jurisdictions with populations under 20,000
- 10% for all others
- Create a waiver for financial hardship. Request that the Administration develop the criteria for granting a waiver.
Grant Caps - $9 million for jurisdictions with population > 2.5 million
- $6 million for jurisdictions with population between 1 million and 2,5 million
- $3 million for jurisdictions with population between 500,000 and 1 million
- $2 million for jurisdictions with population between 100,000 and 500,000
- $1 million for jurisdictions with population under 100,000
Prevention, Research and Safety Grants - $1.5 million cap per grantee for prevention, research and safety grants per year (includes Centers of Excellence)
- National fire service and fire safety organizations may apply for a traditional Fire Prevention and Safety grant and also may parter with a university to apply for a Center of Excellence award. No national organization can apply for more than one Center of Excellence award.
- Remove match requirement for fire departments
Maintenance of Expenditures - Amend current maintenance of expenditures provision to require applicants to maintain budgets at 80% of the average over the past two years.
Other Provisions - Retain other changes proposed in the draft bill prepared by fire service organizations that was discussed at the House Science and Technology Committee hearing on July 8, 2009. These changes address:
- Creation of Centers of Excellence
- The Centers of Excellence is Fire Safety Research would be joint programs between national fire service organizations and regionally-accredited universities designed to establish long-term, comprehensive, applied research programs to reduce fire-related property loss, and deaths and injuries among firefighters and the general public. The groups agreed to the development of 2 - 3 centers of excellence funded at $1.5 million per year.
- Eligibility for State Fire Training Academies
- Firefighter health and safety research and development
- Expand training to include firefighting, emergency medical services...
- Certification of fire and building inspectors employed by fire departments or serving as a volunteer fir or building inspector with a fire department
- Prioritization of grant awards based on call volume and populations served - include report language clarifying this is only codifying current practice
- Adherence to national voluntary consensus standards that address training and equipment purchasing
- Include report language clarifying that paid on-call/stipend should be considered as combination departments
Reauthorization of the safer grant program - National fire organizations can apply for volunteer recruitment and retention grants
- Three-year funding requirement by local jurisdictions
- Twenty percent match by fire department over three-year period
- Remove $100,000 cap per firefighter hired using SAFER funds
- Include a hardship waiver
- Include Maintenance of expenditure language from above
Reauthorization Funding Level and Time Period for AFG and Safer - FIRE Grants - Reauthorized for five years at $1,000,000,000/year
- SAFER Grants - Reauthorized for five years at $1,194,000,000/year
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