Councilor Andrew Faulkner believes the debate over hiring eight additional firefighters is “100% political”. He explained that the aim of the council is to determine an economically responsible way to increase public safety and hire more firefighters. Pictured, from left, are City Councilman Andrew Faulkner, R-Ward VI, and City Councilwoman Kim Ecklund, R-At Large. PJ photo by Timothy Frudd
City Councilman Andrew Faulkner, R-Ward VI, believes the debate over the adequate fire and emergency response staffing grant is “100% political” as City Council members have been criticized for considering the city’s financial responsibility instead of approving the SAFER grant at the most recent meeting.
“I’ve seen a lot of people express their views that it’s silly that the council asked so many questions at the voting session before it came up and that we should have done our homework earlier.” he said “That’s absolutely wrong. Every question I asked in the voting session, ahead of time, I already knew the answer to and I just wanted everyone to be on the same page.”
Faulkner explained that while City Council members already knew the answers to many of the questions asked of city administration officials, the council wanted the answers to be “on record” so that the public could be better informed and so that everyone was “on the same page” at the meeting
While he acknowledged that many residents were upset that the City Council decided to table the resolution until next month’s voting session, he indicated that there was not enough support for the resolution to pass this month.
“Taking it forward gives us a month to work on it and figure it out and hopefully we can come up with something, so honestly, in my opinion, it was either being introduced or voted down.” he said
Faulkner told The Post-Journal that the City Council has been “kind of cheating” to think that the staffing grant for adequate fire and emergency response was “Eight firefighters or nothing.” Although council members were led to believe that nothing could be done to alter the grant requirements, Faulkner said there are approximately 90 pages of information on the FEMA website related to the regulations and stipulations of the SAFER grant. After reading the information, Faulkner said it appears municipalities can modify the amount if FEMA grants approval.
According to Faulkner, the City Council got Mayor Eddie Sundquist to agree to contact FEMA regarding a possible compromise on the number of firefighters hired with the SAFER grant. Faulkner said each council member has sent questions to the mayor to ask FEMA before the City Council votes on the resolution next month.
“Honestly, eight is not sustainable,” he said “Now we have the four ARPA positions, and it would be a huge burden on the budget, regardless of what the mayor wants to say in his press releases that it’s no impact on the budget or a minor impact. It has a major impact on the budget, and we don’t want to be in a position to fire the eight SAFER employees and the four ARPA employees in 36 months.”
Faulkner said the City hopes to develop a plan to at least keep the four firefighters funded by the American Rescue Plan Act after the ARPA funding runs out. He warned that by hiring eight additional firefighters without a financial plan for the future, the city could have “made a hole” this would have meant the dismissal of the ARPA firefighters as well as the eight additional firefighters proposed by the city administration.
“We want a sustainable method to fully staff the fire department,” Faulkner said. “The finances have to make sense, and we struggled to get the financial support behind everything that would be the cost through the grant and after the grant. We received partial information that turned out to be wrong a few weeks ago, and then last Monday or a day or two before last Monday, I think we got the proper funding and Councilwoman Ecklund dug a whole ton into it and did some work on it.”
While Faulkner said he has not yet seen any financial information on how the SAFER grant might affect the annual budget if the city were to reduce the number of additional firefighters from eight to four; however, he indicated that a reduction in the number of additional firefighters could be supported by more members of the City Council.
“It all depends on how you dig into the numbers, but the main goal is to keep firefighters alive for the life of ARPA and beyond.” he said “We don’t want to have to dig a hole and ever get rid of these four.”
Faulkner told The Post-Journal that he believes the SAFER grant debate is “100% political”. Since it’s an election year, Faulkner said he thinks everyone is trying “Make things they can use in their campaign right now,” and that hiring eight additional firefighters would be an opportunity for people to take advantage of from a political perspective.
“I think it’s gotten a little political, and I’ll be honest, when I decided I wanted to run for council, I just thought that all small towns can get along and do the best and we can work together.” he said “The council got sidetracked and sidetracked on some of the details of this grant and it makes us look like the bad guys, but our goal is to find a sustainable way to staff the fire department.”
Echoing other members of the City Council, Faulkner explained that the council is not against the Jamestown Fire Department. However, he said the City Council’s job is to make responsible financial decisions.
“We just have a duty to be financially responsible and make things work as well as possible.” he said
Today’s news and more delivered to your inbox
