Wayne Township may have four additional warning sirens next year if the county is successful in its bid to receive federal grant funding through the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.
During their December 15 meeting, Wayne County Emergency Management Agency Director John Wise informed the Wayne County Commissioners that a grant funding half of the cost of the $90,000 project may be unexpectedly available.
This is a second round opportunity for special projects out of the fiscal year 2010 Emergency Management Planning Grant, said Wise.
According to Wise only those entities that did not submit applications for funding under the program initially are eligible to apply for the $259,000 in funds that remain to be awarded for special projects.
One of the special projects type awards is warning systems, said Wise.
Wayne Township has asked that we make this application on their behalf, said Wise noting that funding under the grant would provide up to a 50 percent federal match provided that there are local, non-federal dollars available for matching.
Wayne Township has four locations that they are looking at which would provide coverage to 85 percent of the township, said Wise noting weve worked with the Auditors Office – the GIS – to come up with what appears to be where we can encompass the most people.
When asked by Commissioner Jim Carmichael why the other 15 percent of the townships population of just under 4200 residents couldnt be covered Wise noted that it wasnt possible to cover the remaining 15 percent by simply adding an additional siren.
Essentially when you put a siren in it covers a radius, said Wise.
There are going to be some areas that dont get covered. That happens, said Wise.
There are blank spots but we work at closing as many of those as we can, said Wise noting that the remaining gaps in Wayne Township are in the townships least populated areas.
Wise noted that he was unsure as to the countys chances for obtaining the grant funding.
I can only say that weve got our name in the hat and I think well get a fair hearing on it, said Wise adding there are still a lot of counties out there that could still be in the running depending on what their projects are.
After the meeting Wise noted that there are currently 59 warning sirens in placed in cities, villages and townships throughout the county and that the addition of new warning sirens is part of the countys ongoing comprehensive emergency management plan.
Weve been working on updating the mitigation plan for the county. One of the mitigation goals is to get the county covered with more warning systems because of weather, said Wise.
Wise noted that the current network of sirens covers probably in excess of half of the county including all of Rittman, Orrville, Chippewa Township, Baughman Township, Salt Creek Township and a large portion of Wooster Township, with the remaining gaps being scattered around the county.
One of the more notable gaps is in the City of Wooster, which according to Wise is 35-40 percent covered at this time.
Having emergency management funding once again available from the federal government for warning systems could be helpful in filling some of the gaps in the countys siren coverage.
There was a period of time when we couldnt get grants for sirens. They have recently opened up again, said Wise.
This year in special projects it just turned out that they didnt have enough applicants to use up all the funds. Thats an opportunity, noted Wise.
