Sample 2008 AFGP Narrative

• Project description: What you are requesting funding for, including budget descriptions of the major budget items, i.e., personnel, equipment, contracts, etc.?
• Financial need: Why can't this project be funded solely through local funding resources?
• Cost/Benefit: What will be the benefits your department or your community will realize if the project described is funded? What would be the consequences if the project is not funded?
• Statement of effect: How would this award affect the daily operations of your department and how would this award affect your department's ability to protect lives and property in your community?

The XXX Fire Department is located in the City of XXX, in XXX County in Minnesota, which is about XXX miles Northwest of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We have the required 5% match and we also have an additional 20% to add to the match. We are seeking $38,528 for compliant radio equipment.

 
Project Description And Budget:
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  After a comprehensive risk assessment of our community structure and departmental needs through a review of incident frequencies, types and outcomes, along with open forums with individual firefighters, a serious problem became readily apparent. The XYZ Volunteer Fire Department lacks the necessary communications equipment to provide basic emergency response services without seriously jeopardizing the safety of our firefighting personnel through the Operations and Safety Equipment program area.

We have the required 5% match and we also have an additional 20% to add to the match. We are seeking $38,528 (includes training) from the AFGP for the purchase of:

• One Base Radio Unit
• Five Mobile Radio Units (one for each unit)
  
• Twenty Pagers and Charging Units
• Six Handheld Radio Units (one for each of 4 officers and 2 for interior crews)

to meet the basic safety needs of our firefighters.  This equipment will fill a gap in our ability to provide basic services and promote interoperability with neighboring communities and is necessary for the safety of our firefighters and also for the protection of the population that we serve. The lack of this equipment is causing the condition or problem which is negatively affecting our ability to provide mission critical services.

The XYZ Volunteer Fire Department receives a small annual budget from the City of XYZ to work with. This revenue is allocated for use in paying our departments operating expenses such as fuel, utilities and maintenance. It does not include money for equipment expenditures.

We seek other sources of revenue through various annual fund raising events such as; Thanksgiving Turkey Bingo, Concessions Stands and a Firefighter's Dance. These events are all reliant on the generosity of local residents. As with most rural areas, The XYZ Volunteer Fire Department is experiencing a declining population due to the migration of our younger generation to urban areas to find jobs, leaving the major percentage of our residents to be children under 18 and senior citizens.

In the past local community and civic organizations have committed themselves to our fire departments fund raising projects with monetary contributions to ensure the safety of the area of which they have members. The City of XYZ has committed to a 25% match to fund this equipment purchase which is a better deal for the Federal government.  Working together we can have a successful project.

 The XXX Fire Department, like most other rural area fire departments, is experiencing a declining population, with the largest percentage of the population being in the 60+ year old category, and the younger population migrating to larger communities.  This in turn has a negative impact on the local areas ability to support the fire department and especially trying to keep the equipment within current standards.  We continually lose a little financial ground each year as we try to replace equipment and the cost of new equipment goes up faster than our budget.

 To provide you with a better understanding of our financial need we have included the following information;

Our total city budget for all activities within our city is $674,000

Our portion for the fire department is $12,000.00 annually. We are currently $1,956.00 over budget with all of our repairs on old equipment. We are totally volunteer with no pay and we have no capitol improvement fund.

The fire department capitol and operating budget from last year is broken down into the following areas;

Fire Department Budget

• $3,182  Truck repairs (pumper #1 1976, tanker #2 1956, rescue #3 1986)
  
• $2,050  Building repairs
• $1,015  Gas and oil for trucks
• $1,000  Training
• $1,025  SCBA repairs and testing
• $510     Misc. firefighting equipment repairs
• $1,482  Building Heat
• $826     Building and Security parking lot electric bill - Lights
• $516     Telephone        
• $1,000  Insurance
• $550     Hydrant maintenance
  
• $500     Cost of dispatching alarms by the county
• $300     Annual medical exams for 3 members each year

By receiving this grant and this equipment we can remove the cause of the conditions and problems which are negatively affecting our ability to provide mission critical services.

Our primary response area of 250 square miles is predominately an agricultural community including a multitude of farm operations and agribusiness's. Our department also provides mutual assistance to twelve (12)  neighboring communities. The twelve (12) departments represent four hundred twenty (420) firefighters.  The positive impact for our own firefighters as well as the mutual aid group is enormous.

We are home to The XXX County Elementary School with a student enrollment of 258 children between the ages of 5 and 13. Our primary response area has a population of 668 individuals, consisting of 298 households, with 28.7% under the age of 18 and 25.6% over the age of 65.

All residents of the community and the students of the elementary school will directly benefit from this equipment with quicker emergency response times and an increased number of responding firefighters participating at each incident scene.

The XYZ Volunteer Fire Department has 20 active firefighters, with approximately 10 firefighters responding to each call. New pagers will dramatically increase awareness and response to calls of service. Our personnel will directly benefit from increased firefighter safety through the reduction of risk of injury from fatigue due to an increased number of responders.

20 pagers and chargers are being requested so there is an extra one on hand should a firefighter's pager and charger become nonfunctional.

The handheld units will allow communications on scene providing more effective incident management and safety to all personnel.

Contracting programming, installation and comprehensive training services will ensure that the correct operational settings and frequencies are used to provide peak performance from this equipment as required by FCC.

Through interoperability achieved from the base radio and mobile units our department and the surrounding mutual aid departments will directly benefit from the ability of the departments to respond to each others calls for additional assistance.

All of this will greatly enhance our ability to respond to all types of hazards and remove the condition that negatively affects XYZ Volunteer Fire Department, dramatically increasing the success of mission critical services.

By not receiving this grant the safety to our firefighters and community are still at risk and we will continue to have a gap in our mission critical services.

 The XXX Fire Department is seeking AFGP funding to help us get our department in compliance with OSHA and NFPA properly and with up-to-date modern equipment so our volunteers are safe in all the hazards and situations we respond to when assisting our citizens in our daily operations.

 Our department is very dedicated to protect lives and property, serving our people and we are the type of department that the FIRE Act is supposed to help.  Eighty percent of the members are also EMTs or First Responders.  Each year, we respond on calls that fall into at least five different categories and with the new compliant equipment it will help us meet the growing demands on our department.  These demands on our department are increasingly disproportionate to our tax revenues and the resources we possess in a small department.

We will be tracking the impact of this grant over the next five (5) years as we measure it's positive impact on our community.

 We appreciate your support and would like to express our appreciation for the opportunities this grant program would provide to our department.

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