Federal grant money assigned to improve services at the Sedona Fire District languishes in an SFD reserve account, exposing a lack of expertise in grant writing at the fire district.

Grant money can add faster, more up-to-date services to the district that taxpayers would otherwise have to pay for or wouldn’t receive at all. Recent findings of stalled projects, funded by grant money, shows a lack of sophistication, not scandal, SFD Business Director Karen Daines said.

“There is no suspicion of any district employee stealing money or spending it on their own,” Daines said, of $150,000 in the books for unfinished grant projects. “We unequivocally know that none of this money has gone into anyone’s pockets.”

Instead, the money, that should have gone to regional telecommunications projects, is in a reserve fund, she said, along with revenue from wild land and special project revenue.

But it begs the question:

Why aren’t the projects complete?

Daines encouraged the Arizona Department of Homeland Security — the grant provider — to take a close look at $150,000 in SFD’s books that was supposed to go to grant projects, whose deadlines have passed.

The issue is ongoing, SFD Public Information Officer Gary Johnson said, so SFD may still be able to meet the requirements and keep some grant money. Despite the problems, SFD is still eligible to apply for grants, AZDOHS Public Affairs Officer Amy Bolton said.

According to an e-mail sent by Daines to the rest of the four-member management team — Assistant Chiefs Bill Boler and Terry Keller and Fire Marshal Will Loesche — AZDOHS has problems with six grants it gave to SFD for regional radio communications projects. All six grants were under the supervision of Battalion Chief Dan Wills, and most were signed by Boler.

One named project was a Black Canyon AIRS grant for $69,720, with a six-month grant period. No work was done until 13 days before the expiration, when Boler requested an extension, which AZDOHS granted through June 9.

No work was done until the end of June, when Wills requested vendor invoices before receiving the equipment. He certified all equipment was received and that 54 hours of installation was complete.

But according to Daines’ e-mail, after meeting with AZDOHS July 9, she discovered none of this was true.

The invoices Wills gave were pro forma invoices, which are standard to give before the equipment arrives, he said.

As for stalling on the project, SFD is a small agency, he said, and they’re “very busy.”

“There are many things that I could be more timely on,” Wills said.

According to Bolton, it is rare for agencies not to finish projects within the deadline or after a brief extension.

AZDOHS has also pulled a grant for $85,000 after paperwork that Boler says he assigned to Wills was never complete. According to Daines, AZDOHS sent Wills three e-mails to remind him to do the paperwork, but he never responded.

Wills says he is in contact with AZDOHS regional representative, Huma Haroon, frequently.

“I talk to a lot of Department of Homeland Security people,” he said. “So it’s not like they didn’t hear anything from Sedona.”

The list of incomplete grants projects goes on, with two already reassigned to other agencies and one that Wills claimed was complete for $275,000, when only $227,194 was used.

“This means SFD fraudulently obtained approximately $50,000 in federal money that is currently sitting in its coffers, unspent,” Daines stated in the e-mail.

One problem is that SFD, which started as a small fire district, never had a grant policy, since the numbers it was dealing with were relatively small.

According to Wills, if he thought there was a need for something, he’d write a grant for it and other divisions did the same.

“There was no real continuity on how we wrote grants,” he said. “As we grow, we need to change the process in which we move forward.”

Boler blames the grant issues on the creation of the four-member management team which acts as fire chief until new Chief Nazih Hazime arrives in September.

“I think we were in pretty good shape until we did this management thing,” Boler said, then grants got overlooked.

Boler, who was interim chief from April to November 2008, said with the formation of the team, he stopped paying attention to grants.

On July 22, the SFD Governing Board approved a new grant policy that requires a new Grants Coordinating Committee to approve all grant applications before they are submitted.