Dozens Of AC Firefighters March Urging Officials To Finalize Grant And Avoid Layoffs
By Cleve Bryan
ATLANTIC CITY, NJ (CBS) -- Thursday dozens of Atlantic City firefighters and their families marched around City Hall urging officials to sign a federal grant that could fund 85 at-risk jobs for at least the next two years.
Paperwork is due by Friday to secure another SAFER grant (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) which the fire department is already using to pay for 50 employees' benefits and salaries.
The issue is that Mayor Don Guardian only wants the grant to cover 35 positions so that the size of the department can be reduced from 235 to 185 firefighters, a figure recommended by the state.
"We need and want 185 firefighters so we'd like to have a SAFER grant for the 35, not for the 85 but that might be the only conditions acceptable to the federal program and then they would be acceptable to us," says Guardian.
Guardian says if it's a question of securing funding for 85 positions or none at all he'll support the 85, but he says all the necessary information might not be available until Friday afternoon just before the SAFER grant paperwork is due.
"Look around, everybody's family, everybody's kids. I mean this is what they're playing with, people's lives," says
Dawn Doorley, a mother of three, whose husband Andrew has four years in the ACFD and might lose his job.
