Firefighters' windfall comes with a catch
Grant can't buy needed truck
By Raja Mishra, Globe Staff | February 9, 2007
When the fire department in the tiny Berkshire hamlet of Cheshire needed a new fire truck, it asked Uncle Sam for a little help.
The response last month was stunning: a $665,962 homeland security grant.
The award was nearly 26 times the annual budget of the volunteer fire department in the town of 3,500. And the rub: The department is not allowed to spend it on a fire truck.
Instead, the town won a grant to fortify the ranks of its volunteer brigade. Its selectmen plan to huddle later this month to hash out a spending plan.
Asked how the money will be spent, Cheshire Fire Chief George Sweet cryptically replied yesterday: "Rome wasn't built in a day."
Sweet said he couldn't say much more about the windfall. Indeed, Cheshire's officialdom is a nervous wreck over it and is reviewing federal grant guidelines.
"We've never had this much money dropped in our laps," said Cheshire town administrator Mark Webber. "People get fined and go to jail because they don't handle money like this properly."
Just as Boston, New York, and Washington complained last year when their homeland security grants were reduced while other less likely terrorist targets received more, the Cheshire money seemed to underscore the puzzling nature of some of the agency's spending habits.
The town does have the Cheshire Cheese Monument, a sizable concrete sculpture of a cheese press commemorating a 1,450-pound cheese hunk given by town elders to Thomas Jefferson in 1801. But its value as a terrorist target is not readily apparent.
Security specialist James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, was blunt: "It's pure pork. It has nothing to do with homeland security."
The money comes from the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grants, a program that was absorbed into the Department of Homeland Security after the agency was established following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Asked about Cheshire's grant, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Val Bunting said yesterday that the town "presented a multifaceted project proposal." She said the grant could be spent over four years, but she would not elaborate .
Carafano said the emergency response program was designed to funnel money to small fire departments and has wide support in Washington "because everyone has a fire department in their district."
But now, Carafano said, "the money is spent under the big lie that it's about national security."
The Cheshire Fire Department wrote two grant requests, one for the fire truck and the other for boosting its 29-member volunteer force. It got a lot more than it bargained for.
And that is where its spending dilemma began.
Cheshire -- the smallest town in Massachusetts to get a grant, but the recipient of the largest amount -- is not alone. As part of $94 million in the emergency response grants awarded across the country, Fall River gets $621,, Concord gets $414,, Littleton gets $207,, and Sudbury gets $101,970.
Cheshire's money can be spent to reimburse volunteers for wages lost at their regular jobs while on duty, new uniforms, and recruiting ad vertisement s. Sweet, who has been chief for 18 years, said the department could use about 10 new volunteers, though it has more pressing needs.
"We really needed the truck," he said.
Sweet said that the department has seven fire trucks, "plus an old antique we use for parades." Of particular concern is a 21-year-old refitted ambulance used to ferry medical equipment to fires. He had sought about $175,000 to refurbish or replace it.
But now that that's off the wish list, Sweet said he might use some of the money to recruit high school students. Or he might put some of the windfall into a marketing campaign to lure volunteers to Cheshire.
"It'll be on billboards, TVs, and radio stations, and that kind of stuff," he said. "We'll have to spend it wisely."
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Raja Mishra can be reached at
rmishra@globe.com 
