Title
Fire and Emergency Services Staffing and Deployment and the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Grant (B)
This item recommends the Commission hear a presentation on the staffing and deployment of Gainesville Fire Rescue (GFR) resources and the FY2017 Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grant.
Explanation
On April 19th, 2018, the Commission authorized the Manager to submit and accept if awarded an application for funding of firefighter positions to staff a four-person aerial apparatus through the FY2017 Federal SAFER Grant. On August 24th, 2018 the Department of Homeland Security notified Gainesville Fire Rescue (GFR) that the City has been awarded $1.9 million in SAFER funding for a three-year period of performance.
On May 31st, 2018, the Fire Services Assistance Agreement (FSAA) between the City of Gainesville and Alachua County expired. The short-term Automatic Aid Agreement (AAA) became effective June 13th, 2018 and will expire September 30th, 2019. The FSAA provided many years of automatic aid for nearly all types of calls for service within the city limits and a limited area of Alachua County surrounding the City. The AAA increased GFR’s responses and limited the responses into each other’s jurisdictions to a specific group of high-risk, high-consequence incident types. It also addressed Alachua County Fire Rescue (ACFR) Station 80, formerly known as Station 19, at 2000 SW 43rd Street. It has been inside the city limits since a June 2009 annexation and the AAA assured the relocation of the apparatus from this station into the County jurisdiction by the end of Fiscal Year 2019 which will increase the response demand on GFR resources. Responses by city and county units primarily serving the southwest area from September 2017 through August 2018 totaled more than 4,600 which exceeds the sustainable annual response capacity for a single unit of 3,000 by 53%.
GFR is an all-hazards department providi...
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