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March 21 2007 11:21 AM Lewis Sellers
I went to the Bean Station public workshop the other night. (What was I doing there? Um. I got lost?) The Mayor was there. The Aldermans. The Chief of Police. (Here is my artist's rendition of the scene made on my PDA.)
It was a productive, positive meeting. Both sides seemed ready to settle the entire issue with the next few days. The terms would be $15,000 a year, with a %5 (or $750) increase IF REQUIRED (hardware only, not for salaries) with an explict stipulation that a repeater owned by the city be left out of the contract. (The repeater is a device used by emergency services usually sitting at the top of a mountain attached to an antenna tower which picks up their radio conversations and boosts the signal out across the county. If say the local police or fire and rescue need immediate assistance, it's important their call can be heard.) E911 had originally planned to take control of the repeater (forever) as a $3000 trade-in. The Chief (Andy Dossett) and several of the board members spent a good portion of the meeting trying to figure out a way of keeping the repeater under city control without incurring undo expenses. In the end, the Chief tabled plans for moving his office to a larger building nearby ($2200) and one of the aldermen (Eddie Winstead) offered his alderman salary ($500) in an attempt to cover expenses.
E911 is going to provide the board with a draft of the contract to carefully read through by this wednesday. They'll have a formal public first reading monday. In the past the city lawyers have been very unhappy with the wording of the draft contracts. As one of the board stated, the way they were written, E911 could charge them $20,000 one year and the city would have no legal choice but pay them. This is the big sticking point. All the E911 draft contracts to date make the city lawyers and the board uneasy about loopholes in it's wording that could end up costing the city many thousands upon thousands of dollars down the road.
I have a suggestion. Have The City of Bean Station draw up the next draft instead of E911, if it comes to that point.
(This post was a bit tongue-in-cheek. Apologies to anyone I drew incorrectly. :)
BTW. My sister's been in law-enforcement most of her adult life, but something only occured to me the other day as I was sitting next to the Chief of Police. What are the intials for that office? C.O.P. Is that not … bizarre?
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