Paul Topolski on Hotline Radio – We’re Getting Back 336 grand
Gardner Emergency Management Director Paul Topolski appeared on WGAW’s Hotline Radio on Saturday, March 23, 2024 for an interview with host Steve Wendell. He announced that FEMA has approved a $336,000 reimbursement to the City for expenses incurred during Covid.
The reimbursement will cover expenses of the mailings, advertising, Covid Call Center, items purchased, huge number of materials and more. “But originally submitted for about a half a million, and then FEMA came back and were telling us that some of those expenses weren’t valid. I’ll give you one example. We had to run the internet into Perry Auditorium, but because that was considered a permanent fixture, that wouldn’t be reimbursable. So there were certain things that they wouldn’t allow, some overtime at the fire department, for example. But $336,000, that’s still a good hunk of change. “
WGAW is heard on AM 1340, 98.1 FM, and streaming to anywhere in the world.
Persistence pays off: Gardner almost didn’t get reimbursed for the Call Center, but Topolski and others pressed the issue and the City is getting the money. “FEMA originally looked at it and said, well, no, we’re not going to pay for any of that. And they made a very strong argument with them that, you know, we needed the call center because we had such a population that didn’t have access to smartphones or the internet. So we told them that at our peak, we had 300 available appointments at the call center, and that day we received 57,000 calls for people trying to get in because they heard that Gardner had vaccines. So once they understood the importance of it, they capitulated, and the call center, all of the labor for the call center, and all of the hardware that we had to buy, and the online services, the internet services that it required were all paid for.”
Mohawk Radio Club
Topolski welcomed the WGAW audience to be a guest of the Mohawk Radio Club which holds a meeting Monday March 25th at 7pm at the Gardner Police Station. If you can’t make that just send Director Topolski an email and he’ll get you in touch with folks at the club. paul.topolski@comcast.net
Solar Flares
Topolski spoke about solar flares: “The other part of what’s going on is the part of the solar cycle. And we’re approaching the peak, which should be around December of this year, before it starts sliding down again on that 11-year cycle. In my shack here, I monitor the solar conditions. And right now we’re in the process of having a radio blackout in portions of the world because of solar flares that are happening on the sun. So it’s very much a natural effect that happens to affect our atmosphere….We had a very large solar flare, what they call an X-Class, on December 31st. And it killed 40 of those new Starlink satellites that are going up. It just killed the satellites altogether.”