Minutes 09/09/1988 - Laserfiche WebLink

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320 -- FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1988 A special meeting of the Council of the City of Martinsville, Virginia, duly- called by Council at its regular meeting held August 23, 1988, was held Friday, September 9, 1988, beginning in the Council Chamber, City Hall, at 8:00 A.M., for the purpose of conducting a review of programs and functions of~ the City's Police Department, especially as such programs and functions might be affected byethe Egll Emergency Telephone System when it becomes operational. With the exception of Vice-Mayor Willjams, all members of Council were present, viz., Mayor L. D. Oakes, presiding officer, William C. Cole, Jr., Alfred T. Groden, and Allan McClain. After the invocation and the stating of the purpose of this meeting, Councilman McClain offered the following prepared statement: As a member of the Council Committee appointed to study efficiency in the City Government, I feel compelled to make a brief statement to try to put today's meeting in perspective. When it was first suggested that the first City Department we evaluate should be the Police Department, I believed - and so stated - that this Department was not the best place to start for the simple .reason that none of us - and no citizen - would ever say we have too many police officers. Personnally, I would like to have a police officer stationed at my home 24 hours a day - as I suppose most people would. Nevertheless, we agreed to review this Department first, because the initiation of the City-County Emergency 911 system will eliminate the need for four dispatchers in the Police Department and the logical question following from this situation is whether this situation would allow the reduction of four authorized positions in the Police Department or whether these four positions - or some of them - should simply be transferred to other duties. In evaluating this question, we must keep in mind that whatever we decide to do about these four positions we are already committed to funding the positions of four dispatchers for the Emergency 911 system. Thus, the real question is not whether we are going to keep or eliminate four positions - it is whether we are going to add up to four new positions.