Emergency radios to go to narrow band

By Eve­lyn Long -

Mor­row County Sher­iff Steve Bren­ne­man addressed Card­ing­ton Vil­lage coun­cil when they met in reg­u­lar ses­sion on August 6.

Sher­iff Bren­ne­man told coun­cil that the fed­eral reg­u­la­tions com­ing out by the end of this year require all radios have to be nar­row band — which affects the power of the radios. All fire depart­ments and squads already have this nar­row band­ing, he said.

Explain­ing that recep­tion for the local depart­ment is extremely poor in out­ly­ing areas, Bren­ne­man said, ‘We have gone through Home­land Secu­rity and look­ing at grants through the Ohio Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Sys­tem to move from our cur­rent sys­tem to the MARCS (Multi-Agency Radio Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Trunk­ing Sys­tem) which is a state wide dig­i­tal sys­tem — OSHP oper­ates on it and quite a few law enforce­ment agen­cies are oper­at­ing on it.”

He noted that, “When you talk about bet­ter sys­tems you are talk­ing about much more money. The radios are $4,000 to $5,000 each, that’s why we’re get­ting grants for those.”

There is a $20 monthly fee per radio. He said he’s been oper­at­ing on a MARCS radio the past sev­eral weeks and the recep­tion has been much bet­ter, mak­ing it eas­ier for him to com­mu­ni­cate with his office.

“We are part of Metro Colum­bus Area — we are Region 4 of Home­land Secu­rity with Franklin County,” said the sher­iff. “They have come up with $190,000 and have got us 20 mobiles and 23 porta­bles. They will be divided up among our agency– Card­ing­ton, Edi­son and Mount Gilead. We put in for two mobiles for Card­ing­ton. Right now with the mobiles there will be the $20 monthly fee but it will be worked in over the next two or three years. We have repeaters, though, that our porta­bles work with — these repeaters do work with the MARCS radios.”

Other reports were given by Act­ing Police Chief Robert Hus­ton who said the July calls for ser­vice included 37 traf­fic cita­tions; eight assists with other units and six vehi­cle lock­outs. The report indi­cated that since Jan­u­ary 1, 2012 the depart­ment has issued 341 warn­ings and 138 cita­tions. The 2008 cruiser has had work done at D & D Auto on the antilock brake sys­tem and the air con­di­tion sys­tem at a cost of $660.19.

He said the police depart­ment has imple­mented the free train­ing that he had dis­cussed dur­ing the last coun­cil meet­ing and he has started to turn in com­pleted cer­tifi­cates. Offi­cers Nor­ris and Shee­han are close to being cleared to work by them­selves. The Explorer Pro­gram added two more youth mem­bers on August 2.

The Explor­ers assisted the First United Methodist Church with their school sup­plies and cloth­ing give away.

Act­ing Vil­lage admin­is­tra­tor Danny Wood said the vil­lage street depart­ment had chipped brush. He had met with Pogge­meyer to dis­cuss their rec­om­men­da­tions for the WWTP update. Streets have been swept and a pre con­struc­tion meet­ing had been held con­cern­ing the repair of County Road 168. That project was to begin August 8 and the road will be closed for two weeks. Mos­quito spray­ing had taken place on August 3.

Mayor Susie Pey­ton said over 70 appli­cants had applied for the fis­cal offi­cer posi­tion. She made arrange­ments to meet with the per­son­nel com­mit­tee, Sherry Gra­ham, Tim Abra­ham and John Cald­well to review these applications.

There was no finan­cial report because the com­puter sys­tem was down.

Mayor Pey­ton noted sev­eral new busi­nesses are prepar­ing to open in the village.

The 35 minute reg­u­lar meet­ing adjourned and coun­cil entered exec­u­tive ses­sion based on ORC 121.22(G) (1). No fur­ther busi­ness was trans­acted at the end of the hour long exec­u­tive session.

The next coun­cil meet­ing will be held August 20 at 7 pm.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Aug 22 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.