Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
At their regular meeting on Thursday, Oct. 6, Eddy County Commissioners received an update on fire mitigation at the courthouse.
During last month's meeting, Eddy County Emergency Manager, Lisa Thompson, revealed an alarming lack of fire safety measures within the building.
Until recently, the courthouse had no working smoke or carbon monoxide alarms and its fire extinguishers were outdated. And despite the courthouse’s fire safety plan stating to pull an alarm in the case of a fire, there wasn’t a fire alarm system installed.
The issue of no smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms and outdated fire extinguishers has since been resolved, but the building is still without an alarm system like the one mentioned in the fire safety plan.
At the time, Thompson didn’t know if such an alarm system had ever existed, or if one had been removed - perhaps during a remodel - and just wasn’t replaced.
However, at this month’s meeting Thompson said, with more confidence, that she doesn’t believe there was ever an alarm system installed at the courthouse.
How a pull-alarm system could have been written into the fire safety plan is unknown. The measure predates Thompson’s time as emergency manager.
Moving forward, the commission has the option of funding a more simple wired smoke alarm system, or a more expensive system capable of fire suppression such as a sprinkler system.
“In my thoughts, the bare minimum would be a wired smoke alarm system with pulls on each level,” said Thompson. “That would automatically set the alarm off if a smoke alarm went off or it could be manually pulled.”
Commissioners agreed there needed to be an alarm system of some kind, and decided the more simple pull alarm system would be best, at least for now.
“This will be the minimum to start with,” said commissioner Dave Gehrtz, “but as we look into the future, and maybe next year when we start doing a budget we should maybe put a line item in there to start putting some money away … it ain’t gonna be cheap, but let's start working towards that direction.”
Thompson said she would begin reaching out to a couple companies, inform them of the situation and ask them for ideas and/or quotes.
Later in the meeting, commissioners also approved their final budget for the coming year, which saw no changes from the preliminary budget presented in August.
For 2023, the county plans to levy 97.62 mills, with each mill worth $15,937. That’s a slight increase over the previous year, in which the county levied 97.13 mills, with each mill worth $15,505.
However, all totaled, the general and special funds approved for 2023 amount to $6,117,102, up from $3,209,855 for 2022.
The large increase is primarily because the county has budgeted for County Road 10 (Brantford Road) improvements, and for the construction of a new shop in Sheyenne, according to Chairperson Glenda Collier.
The next regular county commission meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 1 at 8:30 a.m. in the courthouse.
