Proposal Submitted

Glenn will have more to say about this, I'm sure, and will also put up some supporting material later. But for now:

Congratulations to Glenn for pushing the submit button on the FEMA Assistance to Firefighters grant program yesterday, just before the 5pm deadline. This is the second such submit button he's pushed - the previous one for different proposal was pushed in May.

This was a very complex proposal for a new fire station, to replace our 30-year-old dilapidation of a now wholly inadequate building. He's been working on the infrastructure and details of this for just about a year now. That included everything that anyone contemplating building a house would have to do, plus quite a few others.

Glenn did just about everything substantive to the proposal from acquiring the extra adjoining land needed to build the station (a donation from a very generous landowner) to getting it rezoned (NOT a simple process) to getting perc tests to getting country permits for septic system, environmental disturbance, and a few others along the way. Glenn designed the required structure, investigated LEED requirements, navigated the complicated instructions for proposals, acquired the fire department personnel and district data, and wrote the narrative. He interviewed at least a dozen companies in order to construct the budget. He states that every Oglethorpe County official and company rep he worked with was competent and helpful and a pleasure to get to know.

Glenn could detail much more in the way of "interesting learning experiences," but here's a couple:

On his travels he learned that more than a few submissions are being made from other fire departments in northeast Georgia, mostly (all?) professional ones. Their strategy is to farm out a proposal, presumably at considerable cost, to experts who make their living writing such proposals.

The number of catch-22s is amazing - things have to be in place before the proposal can be submitted, but quite a few of these things really can't be done, or paid for, until after a proposal is successful. Glenn cleverly resolved several of these issues to at least some level of satisfaction.

Here's an example: LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. All new structures have to meet certain green standards to have a reasonable chance of success for funding, and LEED certification is the most credible way to go about it. Certification is *extremely* expensive, and investing that kind of up front out of pocket money is simply impossible for a volunteer fire department.

Time that Glenn spent? Including the meticulous building designs and redesigns over the course of a year, endless measurements - thousands of hours. I can personally attest to it.

Likelihood of success? No idea. It is suggested that 1% of proposals will be funded - sounds pretty unlikely, but there may be some division in funding for professional vs volunteer that we don't know about. My personal evaluation is that if that were the case then Glenn's final product would certainly end up in the top 1% in a volunteer category.

Still, it's what you have to do. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs and you can't break eggs if you don't have them in the first place. You can't get them in the first place unless someone else has the chickens, and sometimes you have to buy them the chickens.

Regardless of whether we are enjoying omelets someday, no effort was wasted. Glenn has a lot of eggs in place, now. Or maybe it's chickens.