Earlier this year, Carlisle Council authorized Callahan to go forward in applying for the grant, but there wasn’t enough time to get the application in for the first round of awards in March. Callahan said they will get the application in ahead of the Sept. 4 deadline.
The discussion of applying for the grant began on the heels of the city of Franklin’s plan for a tax levy that would allow them to create their own Emergency Medical Services division and effectively withdraw from the current Joint Emergency Medical Services organization. City voters approved that levy in a special election on Aug. 7, and the city is now expected to officially withdraw from JEMS possibly as soon as its next council meeting on Aug. 20.
“I still think it is relevant,” Callahan said Tuesday after a Carlisle Village Council meeting. “We need to know if it is advantageous for us to merge anything and the study will tell us that.”
The grant, which could be up to $100,000, was established to provide financial assistance to Ohio political subdivisions for planning and implementing projects that are projected to create more efficient and effective service delivery within a specific discipline of government services for one or more entities.
The cost of the study is 10 percent of the matching funds with the amount to be split evenly between each entity that participates in the study. Franklin Twp. and JEMS are partnering with Carlisle in the study.
“If we are approved for the grant, we have to do a proposal request in order to hire a consultant,” Callahan said. “Whomever we hire will then gather a lot of data from each entity and then prepare and present a feasibility report to us. From that, we would decide what to do.”
Callahan said the study could take anywhere up to a year to complete.
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