Dubois County Council meeting – August 27
The County Council met on Monday evening for their regularly scheduled meeting.
Weather warning sirens
Tammy Miller, the Dubois County Emergency Management Agency Director, addressed the council about emergency sirens at Ireland and Celestine. The fire chiefs, Chris Hasenour from Celestine and Stan Siefert from Ireland, for both volunteer fire departments were present as well.
Hasenauer requested $2500 to update a circuit board for the Celestine Emergency Siren to operate on narrow band frequency. The sirens throughout the county are activated through the Emergency 9-1-1 Communications Center, which now operates on narrow band.
Siefert asked the council for money to update the siren in Ireland. Ireland has two older model sirens that operate on AC current. Currently Ireland does not have backup generators for the sirens and if Ireland loses power as storms move in from the west the town has no way to sound the sirens.
The County Commissioners were against purchasing two generators for the two sirens. Seifert explained the two generators would be overkill for the amount of electricity needed to operate the sirens. Additionally, Siefert stated the maintenance on the generators would add to the cost.
Siefert requested the council approve the purchase of a new siren. Miller told the council the siren to be purchased was the same model recently approved for additional locations throughout the county. These sirens are battery powered and are multi-directional, Ireland’s current sirens are used coal mine sirens.
The company the county purchased the sirens from also extended the rebated price if they purchased this new siren before Friday. Miller said this would save the county an additional $3000 and not require the purchase of the generators.
The council approved the advertised request of $27,500 for the purchase of a new siren in Ireland and the purchase and installation of the circuit board for the Celestine siren.
Sheriff’s Department
Sheriff Donnie Lampert requested $6000 to transfer the sheriff’s department records from the Cisco Database to the new Interact Records System. Interact is the new cloud-based police records database that all of the county’s law enforcement departments are on to ease the sharing of criminal information. The Indiana State Police also use the Interact system. The council approved the request.
Sheriff Lampert also asked the council to waive the 90 day/90% pay policy they have in place for new employees in the county. The Sheriff hired Brad Gudorf for the maintenance position at the sheriff’s department. The sheriff stated Gudorf has performed exceedingly well at the department so far, repairing items that he would normally have to call a contractor to fix, saving the department money. Gudorf has worked for the department for two weeks part-time and one week full-time. The council approved waiving the 90% and allowed Gudorf to collect his full pay for the position backdated to Sunday, August 26.
The sheriff presented pictures of an injured inmate and feces smeared on the wall of a cell to the council. He stated the jail needs another jailer to alleviate stress from the work they do there. He will be requesting permission to hire another jailer. Currently the security center has 76 inmates and according to the sheriff they average two to four jailers per shift. The council was not asked to approve the request at this meeting. Story on this soon.
