New Mayor Takes Close Look at Public Safety

In preparation for taking over as mayor of Lexington (Ken.), newly-elected Jim Gray commissioned a study of the city’s public safety agencies, and found that the city’s E911 center suffers from lack of training, recruiting difficulties, high staff turnover and position vacancies that create overtime. There is no funding for an improved radio system to fill in dead spots or meet the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) narrowbanding deadline in 2012, the report team found. The city’s police and fire department’s also received low marks, saying they had high overtime budgets, inadequate training and equipment problems. Download (pdf) the report section pertaining to the E911 center here, or the full report here.