Fire district receives grant

Thanks to a grant written in a Monroe Community College course, the volunteer Hilton Parma Fire District (HPFD) will receive $11,500 to upgrade their radios. Without the money, fire officials were without resources to purchase the essential equipment.

HPFD will upgrade the radio in the fire station, mobile radios on the fire trucks, and portable radios carried by the firefighters. The upgrade creates compatibility with Monroe County's new narrow band frequency and allows the department to meet the FCC's required change to that frequency by 2008, says John Lemke, HPFD fire commissioner.

"The new equipment will improve reception and reliability," says Lemke. He adds that the new system will give the fire department the option of communicating with each other and with other departments on several different channels, depending on the size and scope of a fire.

Among 17,000 grant applications submitted to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the HPFD grant received funding through the Federal Fire Act on the second attempt.

Students in MCC's Public Administration course on grant writing researched, wrote and submitted the grant a couple years ago. As most applications for FEMA grants are rejected on the first submission, the HPFD grant was reworked, after lengthy discussions with FEMA, resubmitted and approved in December. The fire district will begin buying the new equipment in the next month.