Acting Chairman Update

  Sunday, February 10th 2008

As usual, there are many initiatives and activities being worked on in the Greenfield Fire District. Here's an update, email me with any questions.

1. I am very pleased that Commissioner Bishop has offered to step up and head the investigation on new software to record calls, work details and calculate LOSAP points. Apparently he discovered the FireTracker software during a conference on Long Island.
   
   I have posted on this site many times about how strongly I feel about optimizing how we work as a district - and the reason for that is to alleviate the time requirements on our dedicated volunteers. Software can be a great tool to do just that!
   
   One of the key benefits of this software is that it is web-based, which is now a possibility now that we are getting internet installed in each location. This means that we don't need any special server installations to store the data - this company will take care of all this on our behalf.
   
   I am concerned however on the "backing up" of this data - and getting access to this data for our own copies. But I'm sure we can address this with further investigation...
   
   We set a tentative goal at our last Commissioner's meeting for Commissioner Bishop to report out on this software investigation in April.
2. Internet Technology Installation: the next location to have internet installed will be at the Middle Grove firehouse - tentatively scheduled for Wednesday the 27th of this month. Then we will install into the last location - Porter Corners firehouse. The Time Warner wait for installation is the overhead of this initiative, it can take anywhere from 2 weeks to over a month to get an installation time from Time Warner.
   
   After the internet installation, Tech-II will install and configure the network and then we'll connect the access system to the internet for remote administration. I was originally hoping to have all of this done by the end of 2007 - but with the Time Warner overhead, that obviously didn't happen. Still, I don't see any reason why these initiatives definately can't be accomplished this year. More to follow on this progress...
3. Emergency Generator Installation at the Middle Grove firehouse: the RFP will be received and opened at our February workshop on Thursday, February 28th at the Greenfield Center firehouse. See our website for additional information.
4. Work is proceeding on the installation of the digital overhead projector at the Porter Corners firehouse. I am very happy about this, these projectors are invaluable training tools - next year one will be installed at the Middle Grove firehouse. The Board of Fire Commissioners has also approved the work to upgrade the exhaust hood at the Porter Corners commercial kitchen - so that work will be proceeding shortly - special thanks to Commissioner Waite for taking care of this.

One final note, for those who have been attending the meetings and workshops, you will have noticed that they have been very lengthy and busy. Because of this I have to enforce the necessity to stick to the agenda - otherwise we won't be able to get the meetings concluded at an appropriate time - our last workshop lasted until 10:15pm. If you wish to discuss something with the Board, it is necessary that you contact me and ask to be placed on the agenda.

More to follow...in the meantime, email me with questions!

posted by spackmann in News at 8:34 AM (942 day(s) old)  Permalink