Firefighters ask for money for a firetruck. Guess what they can't buy with their grant?
In yet another case of "who the hell authorized THAT?" this poor little enclave, too small to even be called a "town" asks for a truck, gets a truckload of money, and is prohibited from using it to buy a truck. Wait a minute, what's all this about? Do they actually have to use this money to protect their cheese monument? This is just too weird to be true...
Firefighters' windfall comes with a catch - The Boston Globe:
When the fire department in the tiny Berkshire hamlet of Cheshire needed a new fire truck, it asked Uncle Sam for a little help.
The response last month was stunning: a $665,962 homeland security grant.
The award was nearly 26 times the annual budget of the volunteer fire department in the town of 3,500. And the rub: The department is not allowed to spend it on a fire truck.
Instead, the town won a grant to fortify the ranks of its volunteer brigade. Its selectmen plan to huddle later this month to hash out a spending plan.
Asked how the money will be spent, Cheshire Fire Chief George Sweet cryptically replied yesterday: "Rome wasn't built in a day."
Sweet said he couldn't say much more about the windfall. Indeed, Cheshire's officialdom is a nervous wreck over it and is reviewing federal grant guidelines.
"We've never had this much money dropped in our laps," said Cheshire town administrator Mark Webber. "People get fined and go to jail because they don't handle money like this properly."
Just as Boston, New York, and Washington complained last year when their homeland security grants were reduced while other less likely terrorist targets received more, the Cheshire money seemed to underscore the puzzling nature of some of the agency's spending habits.
The town does have the Cheshire Cheese Monument, a sizable concrete sculpture of a cheese press commemorating a 1,450-pound cheese hunk given by town elders to Thomas Jefferson in 1801. But its value as a terrorist target is not readily apparent.