Roll up your sleeves and get your department's wish list ready. Early March marks the start of the application process for a portion of the $360 million in 2002 Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program funds. Fire Chief recently spoke with U.S. Fire Administrator R. David Paulison and Brian Cowan, director of the grants program office for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The two currently are holding grant application workshops in fema regions around the country. Visit <<a href="http://www.usfa.fema.gov" target="_blank">www.usfa.fema.gov> for application and workshop information.

FC: What's different about this year's grant program?

Paulison: We're going to break this year's grants down into programs. For instance, departments can apply for a piece of equipment and training on that equipment on one application. I think one of the biggest issues this time is that it's going to be Web-based. The fire departments can actually apply online through our Web site, and it makes it much simpler to fill out the application. As they fill these grants out, there's going to be a help menu that will help them through each category and tell them what we're looking for and how to fill a particular category out.

Cowan: Last year we had the application available online, in that it could be downloaded and printed out, but we did not have the actual interactive Web-based application last year. This will do a lot for us in terms of making sure that the quality of the applications and completeness of applications this year is much better.

FC: What's an example of a way a department could make their application more competitive?

Cowan: Take a look at the priorities we've been able to identify for 2002. See if your department's needs match up with those priorities and when they do, identify those in your application and come up with a narrative that identifies very clearly what your financial need is and what benefit will be accrued from the expenditure of those dollars. Have a good, crisp description of the kind of program where a department can assemble various activities into improving firefighter operations or firefighter safety, for instance.

FC: Have the categories changed since last year?

Paulison: The categories are the same, but we broke them down into programs. The programs are fire operations, ems, apparatus and fire prevention. Within those categories there's a whole litany of things that they can put together, programs to help departments.

FC: How have the allocations changed this year?

Cowan: There won't be allocations. We have limitations on the maximum amount of funds that we can spend on vehicles, and a minimum amount of funds that we need to spend on prevention — 25% in the first case and 5% in the second. Beyond that, we want these applications to have an open competition field so that we fund only the best applications.

FC: Is the review process the same as last year?

Paulison: Yes, we're bringing in fire people from around the country to serve as peer reviewers to look at the applications. The applications are impartial — any reviewer with a knowledge of a department's grant request is reassigned to another grant application — they're strictly judged based on the merit of the need for that department. You have to go back to the purpose of the grants, and that's to provide basic firefighting needs to departments that can't afford that.

FC: What would you tell departments that applied last year but didn't receive grants?

Paulison: They shouldn't be discouraged. Don't forget that we had 19,000 departments apply for grants and we only gave out a little less than 1,900 grants to departments. We only had $100 million last year and we had $3 billion in requests. So it may not be that there was anything wrong with their application, there was just a limited amount of money to go around.

This year we have a lot more money. We have a total of $150 million that has to go out during this fiscal year, and then we have another $210 million that we have two years to get out. So obviously the departments are going to have a better chance of getting monies that didn't get monies last year.

Also, we're going to try to do it at least one workshop in every one of the 10 fema regions. We're going to be out there talking to people, telling them how to apply for these grants and make sure they fill them out properly.

FC: Is there anything else fire service leaders should know?

Paulison: We're encouraging any department that has needs to apply for the grants because that gives us a kind of basis of what the needs are that are out there. The usfa also is doing a needs assessment. If departments are asked to respond to that, please fill out the survey and send it back in.