Allen County Jail inmates’ personal mail soon will be limited to postcards, except when sent to an attorney, judge or the sheriff, Allen County commissioners were told Tuesday.
Sheriff Tom Williams said the change was economically motivated.
“Our staff has been spending about six hours a week reading incoming and outgoing mail,” in envelopes to ensure they contain no sensitive information or contraband.
Williams said his decision might lead to intervention by rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union. A handful of similar changes elsewhere have led to lawsuits.
“But,” he said, “we’re going to do it as long as we can,” figuring money saved can be spent more effectively elsewhere.
PAM BEASLEY, emergency management director, told commissioners the CodeRED telephone alert program would expire early in 2011 and showed them two bids for five-year renewal.
One, from Florida-based CodeRED, would cost $11,343.50 a year, while another, from ADT Emergency Notification, Sugar Land, Texas, was bid at $8,362.50 a year, a savings over five years of nearly $15,000.
Beasley noted that CodeRED had performed well in warning Allen Countians about severe weather and helped occasionally with law enforcement missions, but allowed that “savings of more than $2,900 a year adds up.”
A concern she has is how quickly and easily the database could be transferred to the Texas company, and whether numbers attached to cell phones would transfer without having owners register again.
“CodeRED has done everything we wanted of it,” Beasley said, including permitting enrollees to opt out of specific warnings. “No need to send a flash flood warning to someone living on a hill top,” said Sheriff Tom Williams.
Beasley will examine each proposal more thoroughly. Commissioners have ample time to mull a decision, with renewal about three months off.
COMMISSIONERS hired Boren Roofing, Iola, to put a new roof on the LaHarpe Senior Center, at a cost of $3,475.
The roof was damaged by hail earlier and the county has received an insurance payment of $965, said County Clerk Sherrie Riebel. The estimate to replace the roof was $3,900. Boren’s was the only bid.
Large-diameter steel pipe needed for field entrances and other Public Works Department projects this year will be purchased from J.R.C. & Company, Derby.
Bill King, Public Works director, said the Derby Company’s was the only bid received. Cost will be $21 a foot for 16-inch pipe, $31.50 for 26-inch and $36 a foot for 30-inch.
Jason Nelson, ambulance director, said he applied to Kansas Emergency Management for a grant for three power cots, one for each county ambulance. The cots cost $13,000 each. Nelson said the cots would facilitate transport of patients whose size made it difficult for attendants to load them in to and out of ambulances.
“We’re getting more and more patients in that category,” he said.
He noted ambulance activity continued to run ahead of last year, with nearly 1,000 runs made in 2010.
