By Don Rush

Addison Township Fire Chief Jerry Morawski was all smiles last week when he announced the department had received its 30th grant in about 10 years.

The department was awarded $306,000 from the United States Department of Homeland Security.

“This will allow us to hire a full time person for recruitment and retention. It’s for four years,” he said. “This was the third time we applied for this grant. We wrote for the grant a couple of years ago and when we didn’t get it, we went through and critiqued it, made it better, found things we did wrong and we were finally able to be successful this time.”

He added Assistant Chief Dan Cline and Lt Ben Rice “were mostly the ones who spear-headed us landing the grant.”

They are now in the stages of full-filling the grant – finding a full time recruitment and retention officer.

“We already discovered the value of the recruitment and retention officer,” Morawski said. “Currently we have a part time guy – Jim Angelo — who works on Mondays and Fridays. In the last six months that he has worked here he has recruited four paid-on-call people for the department, which is really nice. We have man-power issues. We don’t have the budget to be completely full time, so we need paid-on-call to supplement our department.”

The Addison Fire Department has 10 full time officers and 14 paid-on-call officers.

The new full time officer, as part of the retention duties, will work to make sure officers have what they need to perform their own duties – whether they need new gear or even training.

“In 2010, I had a goal of getting as many grants as we could. I wanted to raise a million dollars in 10 years. Well, we didn’t quite make that,” he said, then while smiling added, “However, in 13 years we have received $746,000 in grants. That put us into a whole new level. We were able to buy a new truck, it allowed us to put a 10-year plan together for capital improvements. Those grants have been a big help.”

Grants have come from “all over” he said, citing examples DTE Energy, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Four County Community Foundation as places they have received grants from.

When the department is awarded a grant, he makes an enlarged, plastic copy of the check and adds it to his wall of fame. The latest grant is the 30th grant the department has received since 2010.