After a suffering through a long slump, a city-hired
grant-writing firm finally hit a home run this week and the
Hollister Police Department will get $120,000 to boost local
traffic safety efforts.
After a suffering through a long slump, a city-hired grant-writing firm finally hit a home run this week and the Hollister Police Department will get $120,000 to boost local traffic safety efforts.
The Office of Traffic Safety will award the grant to Hollister in two installments over the next two years, said Police Chief Jeff Miller, who announced the news at a City Council meeting this week. The money will pay for eight new hand-held radars and overtime costs for additional traffic patrol, he said.
“I think in our case, the city was able to demonstrate a real need for these funds,” Miller said.
The grant was the last of nine applications written by Randall Funding and Development, a firm the council hired in November 2001 for $116,000.
And even though the firm guaranteed a half-million dollars in grants through a two-year contract, in January it used a clause in its contract to back out of the deal.
City department heads didn’t request enough grants for the pledge to apply. The contract called for $1.75 million in applications for the firm to abide by the $500,000 guarantee. And Hollister only asked the firm to pursue eight grants worth $1.3 million.
The grant awarded for traffic safety means Hollister’s total awards from Randall Funding and Development grants comes to nearly $150,000.
“The good news is we’ve now received more grant money than Randall Funding cost us, which is the first time that’s been on the plus side,” said Fire Chief Bill Garringer, who was the city’s liaison to the firm.
Regardless, one grant writing critic on the council said he’s still upset at department heads for the low number of grant requests, and at the firm for backing out of the deal.
“I’m blaming the grant writer and also the staff people,” Councilman Robert Scattini said. “It’s terrible. I’m still burned about that.”
The firm wrote the Police Department’s grant after the city’s contract expired in November, but just before Randall Funding and Development reneged on an offer to continue writing grants until reaching the $500,000 mark.
The other two grants awarded to Hollister during the firm’s contract both went to the Fire Department, which requested six grants from Randall Funding and Development. Those came to about $30,000.
The police radars coming from the $120,000 grant will add to a stock of 15 moving radars the California Highway Patrol recently donated to the Police Department. The new hand-held ones will be different, though, in that officers must be stationary when taking speed readings, Miller said.
Miller said the boost will help a department lean on staffing “to work with the resources we have.”
“The idea is going to be to get the maximum amount of compliance with our laws as possible,” Miller said.
