Confirmation of dabbie's other job.....
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/east-chicago/hammond-mayor-joins-e--party-line/article_4719fcd4-78ea-5fc9-9fd4-af17142953dd.htmlHammond mayor joins E-911 party line
Print Email
2 hours ago • Bill Dolan
bill.dolan@nwi.com, (219) 662-5328
HAMMOND | Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. is about to become the first municipal official to join the Lake County E-911 consolidation.
The mayor said Monday he will sign the Interlocal Agreement for Consolidation of Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP) and present it to the Hammond Board of Public Works and City Council for approval as early as next month.
"I think it's a good deal. I think we are all safer when our police and firefighters can talk to each other, and I hope the rest of the region follows in their approval," McDermott said Monday afternoon.
Thomas Dabertin, a county government consultant, said he hopes the mayor's support will build momentum to get 16 other Lake cities and towns on board.He said Hammond, by virtue of being the largest city in the county, could have formed an independent emergency dispatch and could have withheld from the new county program about $1 million in property taxes it now uses to provide 911 response services.
"Nobody asked for this, but I think it will bring efficiencies," McDermott said of the proposed single county dispatch system.
Dabertin said county officials hope to meet as early as Tuesday with East Chicago officials and in the coming days with Crown Point, East Chicago, Gary, Lake Station and other suburban communities to garner their participation.
This comes in the face of St. John town officials attempting to urge suburban police and fire departments to form a separate PSAP, arguing the countywide model would be too expensive and force smaller communities to surrender too much local control over public safety.
County officials recently bowed to those concerns and offered several compromises, including a guarantee to bear most of the $36.2 million cost of building and equipping a merged police and fire dispatch service that is supposed to be launched before the end of next year.
The county has given up on earlier demands that cities and towns contribute $56 million from their new local income tax revenues over the next decade. The county also will allow cities and towns to choose and purchase their own brands of portable communications radios for first responders.
That is expected to reduce tension between county officials, who want to find the cheapest vendor through a competitive bidding process, and municipal officials, who want to purchase equipment from their preferred providers, including Motorola Solutions of Schaumburg, Ill., which already equips many local departments.
The county will still seek competitive bids, and cities and towns are free to go with the county or cut their own deals.