The East Ellijay City Council has approved letting $40,000 of unused American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant funding go to the county fire and rescue department.
If not spent, the grant funding received by East Ellijay has to be sent back, noted Mayor Mack West during a March 22 city council meeting.
West said he and Police Chief Larry Callahan met with Gilmer Public Safety Director Keith Kucera to discuss equipment needed by the fire department.
“I think this is a very good cause,” said West.
Callahan said the equipment will go on Gilmer Fire and Rescue’s ambulances. The city will make the equipment purchases for the county fire department which also serves East Ellijay.
“They’re going to order the equipment and give us the invoice to pay. If you transfer those funds to another government entity, there’s another level of regulation you have to go to,” Callahan said.
Andrew Burnette, Gilmer Fire and Rescue EMS chief, said the equipment includes ventilators with needed accessories, IV pumps with needed accessories and digital narcotic safes.
Narcotics safes are digital lockboxes for medication controlled by the DEA, including pain and sedation meds, Burnette explained.
“Every vial of narcotics has to be tracked from the time we get it until it is used or expires. Each employee will have a passcode to enter the safe,” he added.
Burnette said it will take a few weeks for the equipment to arrive.
“This money allows us to equip all of our ambulances with these items,” he added.
In other news ...
Councilmembers Don Callihan, Linda Smith and Ed Forrester approved the purchase of six Axion body cameras for the East Ellijay Police Department.
Callahan said the police department has car cameras, but body cameras are becoming standard in law enforcement, especially in the last few years.
“The problem with car cameras is you see just what you’re seeing out of the front window of that car,” said Callahan. “This is a really good company we’re going with, and (the body camera) is just what it says. It’s a small camera that mounts on the front of the officer’s body armor.”
The cameras will reduce data storage by using a cloud service, and they also have an automatic activation capability, Callahan noted.
“If the officer’s gun starts out of his holster, it turns the camera on automatically. If he removes his taser from his holster, it turns the camera on automatically. It also turns on every other camera in a 50-foot radius even if they’re not in our department,” he added. “If it’s an emergency, that guarantees that the camera is going to be activated.”
The East Ellijay Police report for February included 128 total arrests/citations, 19 accidents investigated, 23 incident reports and 62 speeding citations.