At the regular meeting of the Taylor City Council Oct. 12, city leaders voted unanimously to increase the maximum number of firefighter positions from nine to 12 positions, which will add one position per shift, despite learning last month’s Taylor FD application for a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response was rejected.
“Obviously we were applying for two grants,” said City Manager Brian LaBorde. “On the fire side, the SAFER grant was already announced during September, and we did not get it, so we are now going ahead with the budgeted positions on the fire side.”
But LaBorde said the city was still in a holding pattern for increasing staff in the Taylor Police Department until they hear the result of the United States Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services grant to help with the cost of funding three additional officers.
“On the police side, that decision still hasn’t been made yet, and that’s the COPS grant, and it will be made at the end of October,” LaBorde said. “We can’t provide for those positions right now for PD because it could invalidate the grant, that could be deemed as supplanting … But if we do not get it, we will come back for the police side for those positions.”
Human Resources Director LaShon Gros said it was critical to staff the firefighter positions in the meantime.
“We didn’t want to delay hiring firefighters waiting for the police grant to make a decision,” Gros said.
At-large Councilman Dwayne Ariola asked Fire Chief Daniel Baum why the SAFER grant was denied.
“Do we ever get feedback on the weakness in the selection process?” Ariola said.
“Once you get the denial, you really don’t get any comments,” Baum replied. “It’s a generic form letter. The only avenue we have is going through elected officials at the congressional level to reach out to FEMA because that is who evaluates the grant, but we really don’t get any feedback as far as deficiencies go.”
In other business, the council unanimously approved two other ordinances to help boost staffing, including a $5,000 incentive to hire experienced officers. The incentive would allow the city to save that cost on training and another ordinance expands a $1,200 assignment pay to officers who train new recruits.
