2014-06-14 - Laserfiche WebLink

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seconded and all voted for. The Mayor said health care costs are getting increasingly higher and a huge burden on the City's budget. He asked for a committee to study options to help with the cost to the City while still looking out for our employees. He said he will also get several employees to serve on the committee. Councilmembers Poole, Shetron and Henley volunteered to serve on the committee. The Mayor said he would like a round table discussion among the council to talk about the recent issue regarding tornado sirens. Councilmember Bryant gave a brief history on how the sirens came about. He said that originally there were 24 sirens in the county with 8 being inside the City limits of Batesville. Fire Chief Brent Gleghorn also addressed the council and told them that he had talked to several venders today trying to get a feel on how much it would cost to either repair or replace the current sirens. He said that all the sirens are owned by the County so the first order of business would be for the County to give the City the sirens that are in our jurisdiction. The council also discussed the current system used by the City, AlertXpress, that notifies citizens either by land line and or by cell service when an emergency exists. The good thing about AlertXpress is you get notifications for not only tornados but for severe thunderstorms, flash floods, burn bans, amber alerts or any other emergency that could arise. The service is free to the public but only approximately 10% of the county is signed up to receive the notices and they are sometimes not very timely. No one received a notice for the last Friday's EF1 tornado because it actually formed in Batesville and the national weather service had not put out a warning for our area. They also discussed the fact that sirens are only meant to notify people who are outside. The sirens are not loud enough for someone inside their homes to hear and