WASHINGTON
PARISH COMMUNICATIONS DISTRICT
A regularly
scheduled and properly and advertised Washington Parish Communications District
Board meeting was held on February1, 2005 , at the E-911 Planning Office located
at 1007 Cleveland Street.
Members present
were:
Mr. James Coleman
Chairman
Mr. Mike Stogner
Vice-Chairman
Mrs. Cynthia August
Secretary
Mr. Gary Fenner
Treasurer
Mr. Joshua Bridges
Members absent
were:
Mrs. Cynthia August
Secretary
Mr. Mike Miller
Mr. Jason Verret
Others present
were:
Mrs. Joanna Thomas
Manager
Mr. Kenny Gatewood
Attorney
Mrs Rachel Marco
Chairman Coleman
called the meeting to order at the appointed time of 6:00 p.m.
Mr Gary Fenner
opened with prayer and the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United
States.
ROLL
CALL OF BOARD MEMBERS
Mrs. Thomas called
the roll. The results of that roll call are recorded above.
Chairman Coleman
called for a motion to dispense with the reading of the minutes of January 04,
2005, since they were mailed out to each member prior to this meeting.
Mr. Bridges made
the motion to dispense with the reading of the minutes. Mr. Stogner
seconded the motion. Motion passed by a unanimous vote.
Chairman Coleman
asked if there were any deletions, corrections or additions to be made to the
minutes of January 04, 2005. Hearing
none, Mr. Coleman asked for a motion to accept and approve the minutes as
written and mailed out. Mr. Stogner made the motion to accept and approve the
minutes as written and mailed out. Mr. Bridges seconded the motion. Motion
passed by a unanimous vote.
MANAGER’S
REPORT
I have been active during the month of January with both
the normal daily operational issues of the office plus supporting our special
projects. First, let me report on the daily operational issues:
All PSAP’s have been equipped with their new equipment
and the new equipment is working well. Last
week, as part of normal maintenance, Gage Telephone and GeoComm made a visit
last week to further tune their systems for improved performance.
It is expected that the
program which we use to run our monthly PSAP reports will be upgraded during the
second quarter of this year.
In addition, a copy of our
equipment log which records all maintenance assistance requests made to Gage
Telephone is attached for your review.
I have noticed that there
have been a number of assistance requests which can easily be taken care of by
the dispatcher prior to making a call for maintenance assistance.
There have been ten instances since the first of December for which the
solution was either, (1) Reboot the computer, (2) Turn the HLIM back on, (3)
Reconnect the speaker, or (4) Use the correct password.
I will be putting together a set of instructions to be followed prior to
calling Gage Telephone for assistance, in order to help this situation.
Ms. Marco is doing great
job and is working very hard. Her
priority over the next four months is to document the addressing and mapping
procedures, address as necessary, and to stream the roads in the Parish outside
of Bogalusa and Franklinton. Rachel’s
new computer has been installed and is working properly.
Map maintenance software will be installed this month.
Our contract help, Don
Skinner, is still streaming the roads in Franklinton and Bogalusa, and
completing the roof top location data for these two municipalities.
Franklinton should be finished this weekend.
Bogalusa will require three months to complete.
The accounting system is
working well Mr. Fenner and I continue to input the monthly financial data. We
are still preparing for our yearly audit and this should be ready in the next
couple of weeks.
We gave out a total of 35 new addresses in the Parish during January and they are:
Franklinton 14
Mt. Hermon 00
Pine 06
Bogalusa 13
Angie 01
Varnado 01
Total
35
Special Projects
During the month of
January I assisted GeoComm in their tower location accuracy testing.
Although Centennial was not successful
in their tests, we were able to successfully test the new Verizon tower
on Highway 10, Franklinton.
The Franklinton Fire
Department has given us permission to use their new training facility in their
fire station. With this in mind, I
am proceeding to arrange a Basic APCO course for local dispatchers in the period
of August – September .
In addition, following up
on the public TDD outreach meeting last year, I have scheduled a basic sign
language course for law enforcement, EMS, and Fire Emergency responders.
This course will be taught two hours per night, two nights a week, for
three weeks. Our cost for this will
be $ 375. This cost will pay for
the instructor and books for five students.
As you know, Ms. Johnson
made an offer to sell us all the furniture for the amount of $2,000 and after a
discussion, she would not lower her offer.
I contacted Venable’s and asked them to give us a quote on these items
which we would have to purchase if we were to replace them :
1) Front Office Desk
2) Two end tables for front lobby like we currently have
3) A table for the wall in the front lobby
4) 3 reception area chairs for the front
5) Conference room table with 10 chairs
6) A smaller conference room table for the accounting room
7) A small round work table for the conference room
Their quote for these
items totaled $ 2,162. It is
requested that the board consider the two options of either (1) purchasing new
furniture, or (2) acquiring the present furniture from Mrs. Johnson for $ 2,000,
at tonight’s meeting.
This has been an interesting and productive month for our
office. I would like to thank the board for their support and inputs.
Mr. Bridges made the motion to pay Mrs. Johnson the
$2,000.00 for the furniture. Mr. Stogner seconded the motion. Motion passed by a
unanimous vote.
Chairman Coleman
asked for questions or comments on the Manager’s Report, and hearing none,
asked for a motion to accept and approve the report as written. Mr. Bridges made
the motion to accept and approve the Manager’s Report as written, and Mr.
Fenner seconded the motion. Motion
passed by a unanimous vote.
Since all CML equipment is installed, present efforts are
directed toward tuning and optimizing it for maximum performance. Many of these
issues can be solved by additional training information for the dispatchers as
Mrs. Thomas commented on.
Now, lets look at the next step to improve the Washington
Parish 911 system. An important
part of the computerized information system to be used by both the present
dispatchers and future 911 call takers is a computer program which tracks active
incidents, and the assignment of manpower and vehicles to respond to those
incidents (calls for help). This is
called CAD, or Computer Aided Dispatch. While
this system usually runs on its own separate computer, it is normally connected
to our CML and GeoComm system for data exchange purposes.
It would normally be expected that this part of the system
be installed at the time of starting up a centralized call taking or dispatch
facility. It is essential for
information transmission to and from and between our facility and the law
enforcement radio dispatchers, and thus, should be common to all agencies.
Bogalusa currently uses this type of system, but Franklinton and the
Sheriff’s Office do not.
There are two main reasons that the implementation of this
next step is of high priority at the present time, (1) Availability of $ 75,000
through the Office of Emergency Preparedness which must be spent by August, and
(2) the three law enforcement agencies would like to implement a common,
information sharing system. They
see the need for this system and would like it accomplished this year.
Thus, for these reasons, it appears that 2005 is the
appropriate window for this project. If
we don’t take the lead on this we will lose the $ 75,000 and miss the
opportunity to have a common system.
Thus, I am preparing a joint Washington Parish Communications District / Washington Parish Office of Emergency Preparedness Request for Proposal to allow an examination of the options available and their costs. Based on the responses, the District will have a better feel for the total costs, and we can make our decisions accordingly.
Projected map completion date is projected for the end of
May, based on GeoComm’s estimates. We
continue to collect the required field data and transmit it appropriately to
them.
This is a joint effort between us and GeoComm and requires
that we perform the field work and they revised the dispatch map.
At the conclusion of the project the road locations of all official roads
in the parish will have been adjusted and the roof top location of all
structures in Franklinton and Bogalusa will have been checked and corrected.
All of this data, when finished, will allow the computer system to
electronically plot the location of all calls, both wireless and wireline, for
the dispatcher.
The wireless Phase 2 implementation team continues to work
with the wireless carriers to manage their implementation efforts. It is hoped
that Centennial’s two towers will be ready for testing, along with three new
Cingular towers, by the end of February. If
this occurs, the single AT&T tower in Bogalusa will be the sole remaining
tower to be tested. There are, at
present, 19 cellular towers in Washington Parish.
The
dispatcher mapping system, working in conjunction with our Phase 2 wireless
implementation, continues to work well.
Our 911 web site continues to be updated with technical and
additional data of public interest. I
am encouraged by supportive remarks about the information on the web site.
Since our last meeting, the site has been visited by 141 new users with
460 page hits.
In addition, at the
request of Jason Verret, I made a presentation to the Bogalusa Rotary Club, on
the Past, Present, and Future of 911 in Washington Parish. All attendees were interested, and were happy to see our
progress. Several recommended that
we try again at the polls and that reducing the requested phone fee would help
to secure approval. They preferred
a phone charge as opposed to a property tax.
Finally, the APCO Basic
dispatcher course and the Sign Language course for emergency responders will do
much to improve dispatcher and emergency response in Washington Parish.
As you know, the VoIP
or Voice over Internet Protocol, system provides unique challenges to every 911
system in the country as well as our District.
VoIP refers to a telephone connected to the internet, not to the normal
Bell telephone system.
There are three issues
of particular importance to be aware of : (1) When a subscriber’s electric
power goes off, the telephone is typically unusable, unlike a normal Bell system
telephone, (2) Most consumer VoIP telephone systems deliver the 911 call to a
seven digit number without ANI-ALI information, and (3) Most consumer VoIP
telephone systems do not collect 911 telephone fees for the 911 districts.
Our agency is
making much progress to improve 911 communication services in Washington Parish.
I would like to
thank both the board, Mrs Thomas and her staff for their hard work on the many
complex challenges currently facing us.
Mr. Fenner made the
motion to proceed with the RFP for the CAD system. Mr. Stogner seconded the
motion. Motion passed by a unanimous vote.
Chairman Coleman
asked for questions or comments on the Chairman’s Report, and hearing none,
asked for a motion to accept and approve the report as written. Mr. Fenner made
the motion to accept and approve the Chairman’s Report as written, and Mr.
Stogner seconded the motion. Motion
passed by a unanimous vote.
TREASURER’S REPORT
Mr. Fenner reviewed the financial statements beginning with
the current assets. He
Mr. Fenner asked if there were any questions or comments
regarding any of the financial statements.
Chairman Coleman called for questions or comments on the
Treasurer’s Report. Hearing none,
Chairman Coleman called for a motion to accept and approve the Treasurer’s
report, all the financial statements, and the checklist.
Mr. Bridges made the motion to accept and approve the Treasurer’s report, all the financial statements, and the checklist. Mr. Stogner seconded the motion. Motion passed by unanimous vote.
There were no
committee reports given.
PUBLIC
COMMENTS
There were no
comments by the public.
Chairman Coleman called for any additional comments or
questions from the members of the board. Hearing
none, he called for a motion to adjourn the meeting.
Mr. Stogner made the
motion to adjourn. Mr. Bridges seconded the motion. Motion passed by a unanimous
vote. Meeting adjourned at 7:55 PM.
As recorded by: Mrs.
Joanna Thomas.
Approved by:
___________________________________
Mrs.
Cynthia August, Secretary