Princeton Keeps Its Firefighter Grant. Now It Has To Find The Money.

Princeton has accepted a federal grant to hire six more firefighters. How the city will pay its share has not been decided.

On Oct. 26, the Princeton City Council voted 4–2 to keep a Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant, known as SAFER, that the Princeton Fire Department won in September.

The item on the agenda was a resolution to repeal the authorization council granted in June and notify FEMA that the city declines the award. A motion to adopt it died when no one seconded it. Council then took up a motion to approve the grant, which passed.

Before the vote, Alternate City Manager David Hall told council the money was not in this year’s budget. The most readily available place to find it, he said, was the list of new positions council approved during budget talks, which included several police officers.

What The Grant Covers, And What It Doesn’t

SAFER is a FEMA program that pays part of the salary and benefits for newly hired firefighters for three years. After that, the city carries the full cost.

Interim Fire Chief Steve Gammons opened the item by correcting the numbers council heard in May, when it first authorized the application. That presentation said FEMA would pay 100 percent of the cost in year one, 70 percent in year two and 50 percent in year three. Those terms came from the pandemic-era version of the program, Gammons said. The current terms are 75 percent in years one and two and 35 percent in year three.

The department’s breakdown put the city’s share at about $218,000 in year one, including protective gear for the new hires and federally required overtime that the grant does not cover. Year two comes to about $211,000. In year three, when the city’s share rises to 65 percent, the cost is about $470,000. In year four, Princeton would pay the full cost of the six positions: about $713,000 a year, and rising with annual 3 percent step raises.

The city paid a fire consulting firm $18,000 in April to write the application. It was submitted in June, and FEMA awarded the grant on Sept. 28. Staff said the city faced a deadline to send FEMA a letter saying whether it would accept.

The Case For Accepting

The fire department’s argument rested on call volume and staffing.

Princeton firefighters answered about 3,900 calls in 2023, about 4,400 in 2024 and 5,223 in 2025. The department is now averaging close to 500 calls a month and expects to finish 2026 at 5,500 to 5,600. More than 70 percent of those calls are medical.

The department has 42 firefighters on shift work, 14 per shift, plus seven administrative staff. Its minimum staffing is 11 on duty. With 14 assigned, Gammons said, three absences push the department into overtime. With six more firefighters, it would take five.

The grant was written to move Princeton toward NFPA 1710, a national standard for career fire departments that calls for four firefighters on each truck. With 11 on duty, Gammons said, the department cannot meet that.

Overtime was the other half of the argument. The department logged about 14,400 overtime hours last year. About 5,400 of them were overtime that federal law requires for firefighters’ schedules. Most of the rest, about 59 percent of the total, went to covering sick calls, family medical leave and workers’ compensation absences. Firefighters can carry only 240 hours of vacation, so the department schedules two people off every shift to keep them from losing it.

Gammons said he could not guarantee overtime would fall. “I can’t tell you 100% that I know we’re not going to be at 700,000,” he said. But with the grant, he added, “there’s no way we’d be at 700,000.”

Mayor Pro Tem Bryan Washington said early in the discussion that he supported accepting the grant.

The Case Against Accepting Now

Hall raised the most detailed concerns about the cost.

He said the fire department spent about $700,000 on overtime last fiscal year, and council has budgeted about $427,000 for this one. He said the department’s overtime had roughly doubled while its staffing grew about 20 percent, though he noted it was an unusual year. “Most likely your overtime budget is going to be short as it is,” he said.

Asked whether the department needs more staff, Hall said his answer might make him “the most unpopular person.” Princeton will need more firefighters as it grows, he said. But as a city manager rather than a fire chief, he said he was not convinced the city needed to reach the NFPA standard today.

Hall said the grant was not planned for and that he could not point to any savings or new revenue to cover it. The only funding he could readily identify was the city’s reserve, which is budgeted to sit about $14,000 above the city’s own 25 percent policy, or the enhancements council approved during budget talks. He put this year’s cost at a minimum of about $220,000.

On the possibility of higher-than-expected sales tax revenue, Hall said, “I wouldn’t stake my professional reputation on that.”

Mayor Eugene Escobar Jr. said it was hard to find $300,000 in this year’s budget and asked where $700,000 a year would come from later. Council member Terrance Johnson said he was comfortable turning the grant down and applying again once the city had reassessed its finances.

Another council member pointed to the city’s experience with Fire Station 4, which Princeton took on and later temporarily closed when it could not afford to staff it fully. “I don’t want to get to year three, year four and now we’re talking about who we’re laying off,” the member said.

Council member Jaisen Rutledge said he wished council had more time to understand the overtime numbers before deciding.

The Argument Against Waiting

One council member said Princeton is near 50,000 residents, and once the city officially crosses that line, its required local share for a future SAFER grant would go up and it would compete for awards against larger cities.

Steve Deffibaugh, a former mayor who resigned his Place 5 council seat this month and served on Princeton’s volunteer fire department from 1989 to 2018, spoke about the grant during public comment. “I don’t envy you making this decision this evening,” he said.

Who Pays

Hall told council that if it approved the grant, he would come back with a list of the budget enhancements that would go unfunded. He estimated the police department would lose “at least two of those positions, potentially three” from the officer and administrative positions added during budget deliberations.

Before the vote, one council member said, “I really, really want to give this to you, but I can’t sacrifice police officers at the same time.”

The grant passed 4–2.

Later that night, when council members listed items for future agendas, one asked Hall to come back with an analysis “so we can see how much of a hole we dug ourselves into” with the grant. Hall said that analysis would take time.