PICKERINGTON CITY COUNCIL
CITY HALL, 100 LOCKVILLE ROAD
TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2010
COUNCIL WORK
SESSION
6:30 P.M.
1. CALL TO ORDER: Mayor O’Brien opened the Council Work Session at 6:30 P.M., with the
following council members present: Mr.
Sauer, Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Barletta, Mr. Wisniewski, and Mayor O’Brien. Mrs. Sanders, Mr. Fix, and Mr. Blair were
absent. Others present were: Bill Vance, Lynda Yartin, Ed Drobina, Jon
Kochis and others.
2. SCHEDULED MATTERS:
A. Presentation on “Alert Fairfield County” system by Jon Kochis, Fairfield County
Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security. Mr. Kochis stated he would like to brief
Council this evening on the newest software that is designed as part of his office’s
mission for public information and warnings.
He stated this is a method of reaching out to people during
emergencies. Mr. Kochis stated the
system works on two parts, first being the home, land line telephone. He stated they have purchased that
information from AT&T and they are contracted to never release that
information, not even to the Sheriff’s office for their 9-1-1. He stated the other part of the system is the
mobile voice override P (VOIP) application such as cell phones or mobile
devices and those numbers cannot be purchased.
He stated individuals must give those voluntarily when they sign up for
the system. Mr. Kochis stated the system
is called “Alert Fairfield County” and while you hear it referred to as
Reverse 9-1-1, that is a trademarked name that they are not allowed to
use. Mr. Kochis stated residents can
register their cell phone number or VOIP by going to www.fairfieldema.com. He stated registration is very easy and they
have advertised it by mailings, advertisements in newspapers, and they will
continue to do more to get people to sign up for this system. Mr. Kochis stated the reason they were asking
for home addresses is so they can geo locate this system and they could warn
down to one house, a city block, or whatever they define geographically.
Mr.
Kochis demonstrated how the system works and stated they have pre-purchased two
years worth of minutes in this system and that is enough to call everyone in
the County twice with a 30-second message.
He stated e-mails can be sent if the e-mail addresses have been
registered and e-mails are free. He
stated they just wanted to ensure that e-mail messages were critical so it
would not get to the point that people felt it was spam and wanted it
deleted. Mr. Kochis stated there is also
the option of an internal contact database and you could use this, for example,
to call all of your employees and let them there is a snow emergency and
buildings were closed. He stated for
this type of message the City would have to reimburse the cost of these minutes
to the County, but the use of the system itself is free. Mr. Kochis stated Fairfield Medical Center had determined it would cost them $226 to
call all of their employees with a 30-second message. He stated the cost of the system is about
$11,000 per year and they have covered all of that in the grant and if the
system is available and the City wants to use it, all they would need to work
on is the data entry part to put all of the employees in.
Mr.
Kochis determined there were no further questions by the Council and stated if
the City would decide to use this system as a method of notifying their
employees, just contact him.
3. ADJOURNMENT. There being nothing further, Mayor O’Brien
closed the Council Work Session closed at 7:05 P.M., August 17,
2010.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED:
______________________________
Lynda D. Yartin, Municipal Clerk
ATTEST:
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Mitch O’Brien, Mayor