Emmet County approves public safety, IT purchases and agreements
PETOSKEY — The Emmet County Board of Commissioners approved several purchases and agreements for public safety and IT purposes during their meeting on Thursday.
In the public safety sector, the county approved annual grant agreements through its Jaws of Life program with several local fire departments and rescue agencies.
“Jaws of Life is a program that Emmet County puts on where we offer grant programs for up to $4,500 for any of our local fire departments or entities that use Jaws of Life equipment,” said county administrator David Boyer. “So that’s for training, that’s for purchase of equipment and that also goes to Pellston Search and Rescue that works directly with our sheriff’s department.”
The local fire departments can receive up to $4,500, while the county Search and Rescue receives $5,500.
As part of the program, the departments are required to sign an agreement to provide documentation on how the funds are used. According to the board’s agenda information, all of the participating fire departments and entities met the contractual reporting requirements in 2022. One fire department did not spend the awarded amount of $4,500 and will receive a reduced amount in 2023. The Harbor Springs Fire Department did not participate in the program in 2022 and will be added for 2023.
In total, grant agreements were approved for Emmet County Search & Rescue, Pellston Fire Department, Carp Lake Fire Department, Mackinaw City Fire Department, Littlefield-Alanson Fire Department, Harbor Springs Fire Department, Resort-Bear Creek Fire Department and the Petoskey Department of Public Safety.
The board also approved the purchase of two new vehicles for the Emmet County Sheriff’s Department.
“The sheriff department budgeted for three replacement vehicles for this year,” Boyer said. “I think we came to the last meeting with one of the replacements. They were able to find two new Tahoes, which makes up our fleet — including the Chargers that we have, the Durangos and the Chevy Tahoes.”
More:Emmet County sheriff’s department to get new cameras, patrol car
At the board’s Feb. 6 meeting, they approved the purchase of a Dodge Durango. The proposal at the Feb. 16 meeting was for two Chevrolet Tahoes available through Berger Chevrolet of Grand Rapids. The Michigan State bid price is $40,312 per unit for a total of $80,624.
The sheriff’s department also requested up to $9,000 per unit to install the necessary emergency equipment.
“Hopefully with switching out Tahoe to Tahoe, most of the equipment transfers over,” Boyer said.
On the IT side, the board of commissioners approved the purchase of virtual server hosts and storage to replace outdated equipment.
“Virtual server is an environment that we have that a lot of our data is stored on,” Boyer said. “What we’re proposing, we have hardware that has now reached its end of life. We have three virtual servers that need to be replaced.”
The county will be replacing the three servers with two new virtual hosts. The purchase from Avalon Technologies will cost $38,580.
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The board also approved renewing a one-year contract with Empiric Solutions, Inc., a Petoskey-based IT firm, in an amount not to exceed $124,368.
“Empiric Solutions is our current contractor that has been working with the county,” Boyer said. “They’re kind of our back room providers. They work on the network and all improvements on the network. They’ve done an excellent job over these last few years with bringing our system up to speed.
“The biggest concern we have is the security on our network to make sure that we don’t have any issues. You hear of communities being breached, and what problems that caused. They’re working to make sure that we don’t have those issues.”
The Emmet County Board of Commissioners will next meet at 6 p.m. on March 6.
— Contact Jillian Fellows at jfellows@petoskeynews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Emmet County approves public safety, IT purchases and agreements
