Grifton Board Meets

GRIFTON  — The Grifton Fire Department may not be get an aerial ladder truck, thanks to a factual error in the department's application.

Grifton Fire Chief Edward Meeks told the Grifton Board of Commissioners in their workshop session last Wednesday that the federal agency FEMA approved the department's application in the amount of $405,000.00 to buy an aerial truck on March 5, 2004. “We were actually notified before that,” Chief Meeks stated. He said a June site visit was made and the grant was put on hold because the application indicated that there were 200 four-story buildings in Grifton. “It was a typo,” Meeks stated. “In 2003, they admitted to me that they had some flaws in their software.” Meeks said he is not sure if the number 200 was a typographical mistake or a computer software error.

Meeks explained that he was in touch with Bill Bullock of the United States Department of Agriculture that it would be the recommendation to go ahead and fund the application, but his boss, Tom Harrington, has said “no”. Harrington denied the application, Meeks said. “There is an appeal process but we don't have the paperwork yet.” Meeks said he talked to USDA officials last week but he said he is not sure when the paperwork will get to him.

Meeks said there would be no penalties. “Tom said he realized it was not intentional,” Meeks said of the error. Meeks pointed out that he did not know by what criteria would be used to fund the application, making it impossible to know if the number of four-story building would affect the grant.

Meeks also told the board that a $15,000 grant that the department was to get in 2004 also used the incorrect number of 200 four-story buildings. He said the department made the funding agency aware of the error and that grant too was denied because the department is actually working out of the same station.

"It was nothing intentional or no penalties," Meeks said in conclusion. He told the board that the amount of money that would be financed for the aerial truck would be the same financed for a pumper-tanker truck. Meeks admitted, when asked, that the department needed the pumper-tanker truck more than the aerial truck anyway.

The town had planned to share the balance of the cost of the aerial truck, after the grant, with the Rural Association. Grifton Town Administrator Michael Peoples said the amount the two bodies would share is $125,000. The total cost of the aerial truck would have been $530,000. 

Peoples said, however, there is still a chance that the grant might happen since there is an appeal process. “We’ll have to wait and see,” he said in a Tuesday phone interview.

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