Safety And Licensing Committee Approves Fire Department’s Request To Provide Confined Space Services To Purina; Reviews Two Grant Applications AFD Submitted

The Safety And Licensing Committee had several Fire Department related items on the agenda of their 01/12/2022 meeting.

The first was an action item requiring a vote on a request from Fire Department to enter a contract with Purina Animal Nutrition to provide confined space services for their organization.

Fire Chief Jeremy Hansen explained to the committee that Purina had approached AFD and asked them to perform these services. All business and industry that have confined space have to identify those confined spaces and inform their local fire department of those spaces. In addition to that, Purina also wanted AFD to be available for standbys. “What that allows us to do is when they make entry, we will have a team there in case something bad happens.”

Currently, the only other organization AFD provides confined space standby services to is the Appleton’s Department of Public Works. Some larger commercial companies may have their own rescue team to do standbys but Purina wanted to contract with AFD.

He said, “I think it’s a great opportunity. We get to do training and preplan that facility so that if an emergency does happen, we already know where we’re going and what we’re gonna do.” He added that it would be budget neutral because all costs would be reimbursed. Additionally, anything they did at Purina with the exception of emergency response, would be on overtime so there would be no impact to city services during any operation at Purina.

The committee had no questions and approved the request 5-0.

There were also a couple of information items each regarding FEMA grants the Fire Department had applied for. The first was for paramedic training

Chief Hansen said that every year FEMA puts out Assistance to Firefighters Grants (AFG). AFD had used such a grant in the past to purchase self-contained breathing apparatus. The grants allow departments to get pretty much anything that they need as long as they can justify it. In 2021 in response to the Covid pandemic, the government increased the pool of money. Normally there would be around $500 million available to give out as grants, but this year there is around $700 million.

He said that one of FEMA’s top priorities was to prepare resiliency for the next pandemic and, within that, one of the high priorities was increasing the levels of service to communities by increasing the number of paramedics as compared to EMTs. That was already something that the Appleton Fire Department was planning to move toward in 2024, so this was a great opportunity for them. They were hoping to train 6 people. The grant would cover any training costs as well as the cost of backfilling those 6 positions while they were receiving training. AFD asked for roughly $211,000, they should find out whether they were awarded the grant sometime between March and June of 2022.

Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) said that it looked like there was a local match requirement of 10%. She wanted to know how that would be paid.

Chief Hansen answered that their plan was to use their current overtime budget. If there is overtime allotted because their firefighters are in school, they already have a budget for that. The grant match would be roughly $20,000 and the overtime budget is around $500,000, so the costs would be easily absorbed.

The second grant application was for a regional radio project.

Chief Hansen explained that municipalities were allowed to apply for one local grant and one regional grant each year. Appleton’s local grant application was for the paramedic training. The regional grant, which has been submitted by 18 fire departments in Outagamie County, was to replace their radios.

He said there was nothing wrong with their radios, but they could no longer get parts for them or get intrinsically safe batteries. There were some chuckles when he told them the Fire Department wanted radios that didn’t explode when the button got touched.

The total grant request for all the participating fire departments was roughly $4.4 million.  So, the total grant request for all the departments is roughly $4.4 million. If Appleton were to outright buy their radios, it would cost the city around $532,000. As with the first grant, there would also be a 10% match for this grant. He said there was already a placeholder in the Capital Improvement Project budget for that. As with the first grant, he said they would hear sometime from March to June, whether they were awarded the money.

He added that when Appleton purchased their current 800MHz radios back in 2012/2013, they paid for them with one of these grants. He did not, however, know if they would be awarded this one because, usually, for a grant of this size, it takes 2-3 tries. The key would be whether the radios that they currently have will still have parts available on the market or if Appleton will have to budget to replace the radios with 100% of our own money. They didn’t want to do that and were trying to get a grant for it instead.

Alderperson Michael Smith (District 10) asked if he could explain what types of radios they were talking about.

Chief Hansen said that the grant they were seeking was only to replace their handheld, portable radios which he said cost anywhere between $9,000 and $10,000 each.

The committee had no further questions.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=913977&GUID=1259F626-E567-4C74-A49C-5B17EA498C4B