Garland County returns $253,951 grant for emergencies

HOT SPRINGS — Garland County’s return of a state Homeland Security grant earmarked for the Hot Springs Fire Department will affect the southwest part of the state’s response to hazardous materials emergencies, the city said Friday in a news release.

County Judge Rick Davis notified the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management last month that he was returning a $253,951 grant awarded in fiscal 2016 to the Fire Department’s Hazardous Materials/Weapons of Mass Destruction response team.

The grant terms require the county to pay for the team’s equipment and training and then be reimbursed by the state.

The county allocated the funding for fiscal 2014 and 2015 from the part of its General Fund that pays the county share of district court and animal service expenses and the county’s $75,000 contract with the Hot Springs Metro Partnership.

The Garland County Finance Committee tabled the passthrough funding for fiscal 2016 in November, citing the county’s responsibility to disburse all the funds before it gets reimbursed. In a news release he issued Friday, Davis said the allocation puts a strain on the county finances.

“Even though the county matching funds are ‘pass through’ and will eventually be reimbursed, $250,000 from a half-cent sales tax budget is hard to commit for over a year before reimbursement when that money is desperately needed for other pressing purposes that serve all the people of the county,” Davis said in the release. “I’m told it takes almost a year for the county to be reimbursed.”

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City Manager David Frasher took exception to the committee’s plan to withhold the funds in the fall.

“I don’t understand that,” he said in November. “I’ve been in this business for 34 years, and I’ve never seen that. It’s passthrough dollars with no consequence to the county for passing it. How does it cost them anything? It’s a 100 percent pass through of federally sourced funding.”

Fire Chief Ed Davis said in the city’s news release that the grant enables the Fire Department to operate the only Hazardous Materials/Weapons of Mass Destruction response team in southwest Arkansas.

A Joint Hazardous Assessment Team within the larger response team is one of only six in the state, he said, comprising a law enforcement officer, a Fire Department Hazardous Materials/Weapons of Mass Destruction technician and a member of the Arkansas National Guard Civil Support Team.

The Joint Hazardous Assessment Team is deployed at large events, such as the Arkansas Derby.

“JHAT teams perform an important security function, observing the attendees and sampling the atmosphere for the presence of hazardous substances,” the fire chief said in his release. “In the event of an act of terrorism at one of these large gatherings, JHAT teams would act as the first line of defense for attending patrons.”

The county judge’s notification letter to the state Department of Emergency Management cited the city’s removal of $40,000 from its 2017 budget that had gone to the Garland County Department of Emergency Management in previous budget cycles.

Bo Robertson, director of the Garland County department, said Friday that the funding cut would have made it difficult to purchase, inventory and track the specialized equipment the grant funds provide.

“They do audits on this stuff,” he said. “State and Homeland Security representatives check your books to see what you’ve purchased. They want to know where the equipment is, and they want to see it.”

Fire Chief Davis said that, without the funds, the Fire Department won’t be able to purchase $203,950 of protective and recognition equipment used in the containment of chemical releases.

Returning the grant “has restricted future development of the Hot Springs Fire Department’s [Hazardous Materials/ Weapons of Mass Destruction] capabilities,” he said in the release. “As a result, Hot Springs firefighters will respond to potential [Hazardous Materials/ Weapons of Mass Destruction] environments with lesser-quality equipment and without state funding.”

Robertson said the Fire Department still has about $400,000 of equipment his office purchased.

The county judge’s letter to the state Department of Emergency Management noted the city’s “consistent, ongoing unwillingness” to cooperate on improving public safety, including reports he’s received that the Fire Department wasn’t fulfilling grant responsibilities that require it to train volunteer fire departments in hazardous material containment and decontamination.

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