Impacts from the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) are significantly affecting the Nampa Fire Protection District, with federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grants used to pay for 15 firef ighters being put on hold. The district's three-year, $5.4 million grant covered the salaries and personal protective equipment for all 15 firefighters at Nampa Fire Station 6, but the funding was frozen 18 months early.RELATED: Nampa Fire Protection District and Nampa City Council discuss need for dedicated spaceFire Chief Kirk Carpenter emphasized the importance of Station 6, which has reduced response times in South Nampa by one full minute. So if you can imagine when we're going on a medical call where someone's not breathing, the difference that one minute makes is literally life and death in some cases, Carpenter said. And so for us, there is no option of moving back to operations without that station. That would be something I think our community would be very disappointed in.The Nampa Fire Protection District encountered a roadblock when attempting to request reimbursement for last month's grant. We found out that we were in the review process already. And we were sent a form letter that says you're in a 30-day manual review of your grant, Carpenter explained.Earlier this month, Nampa Mayor Debbie Kling met with Senators Jim Risch and Mike Crapo's teams in Washington, D.C. I also gave them a list of all of our city grants that were paused, but the SAFER grant is extremely impactful because that's a grant that's already issued and signed and moving forward. And so a pause in funding is extremely significant, she said over the phone. Nampa remains unable to submit next month's reimbursement request, leaving them $324,000 behind. And it sounds like it has not been reinstated, Mayor Kling noted. That is significant. Very significant. So very unfortunate, too. So I'll reach out to the same staff again and just raise the visibility of that one more time.This story was initially reported by a journalist and has been, in part, converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy. ...read more read less