Radio grant sought (10/06/2008)

The Emergency Management Agency is radioing in for some grant funding.

The Jay County Commissioners signed some paperwork for Jay County EMA director Ralph Frazee to obtain a communications grant to purchase new 800 MHz radios for county emergency departments.

The $131,590.05 grant would be used exclusively to purchase the radio equipment.

Frazee said the sheriff's department would be first to receive the new radios and local fire departments would follow.

The commissioners also reviewed a conflict of interest disclosure presented by Frazee, who said the state requires the document on hand since he is both EMA director and a member of the Local Emergency Planning Committee.

"They won't let us do EMA grants because it's a conflict of interest," Frazee said. He said it's not a big problem, since most people working in emergency management have the dual membership and that the disclosure statement should take care of any problems.

In other business Monday, the commissioners:

•Spoke with Dale Widman, president of the Jay County Health Department, and approved new appointments to the health board.

•Spoke with a Penn Township man about a dispute he's having with a neighbor about a drive near their properties. His neighbor, who is wanting to cut off use of the road, alleges the path is not public property. An old map at the Jay County Historical Museum showed that in the late 1800s it was designated as a public road, but no recent information shows it as such. The commissioners said if the auditor and county engineer couldn't verify it as a county road, which they couldn't, they could do nothing to resolve the dispute.[[In-content Ad]]