FARMINGTON — Selectmen Tuesday night, Sept. 12, authorized expenditures for equipment purchases for the Police and Fire Rescue departments.
Approved for the Police Department was an expense of $6,956.00 from the Police Drug Reserve Account to purchase a TactiScan portable narcotics screening device and the first annual fee. The device costs $6,200. The annual fee of $756 is for the mobile app and cloud service backoffice analyzing to maintain the data base.
“Really it is an officer safety issue,” Police Chief Kenneth Charles said.
When drugs or narcotics are seized there are two ways officers now determine if drugs are involved: admission by the offender or conducting a chemical test, he noted.
Officers have to scoop out a little bit of the product to do the test, Charles said. “Obviously we don’t want to expose our officers or anyone else to the product,” he stated.
The next option costs approximately $30,000 to $40,000 with a much steeper annual cost, Charles said.
“The TactiScan is relatively inexpensive comparatively,” he noted. “It is essentially a spectrometer, uses a light beam passing through and is able to identify what the substance is. There is no hands on, no taking [the drug] out of the bag, no exposing people. It is much safer.”
Selectman Joshua Bell asked if calibration was needed, about any issues if a case went to court.
Known as a presumptive test, no calibration is needed, Charles said. “If a case is going to go to court, then we send the drug to the state lab.”
TactiScan has been on the market for at least 10 years, is produced by a European company that began expanding into the Unites States last year, he stated.
Similar to an old style radar gun, the device is fairly small, officers can take it with them, Charles noted. It would be good to have two some day, to keep one at the office, he added.
Selectmen also approved a $71,428.57 FEMA assistance to firefighters grant and authorized spending $3,571.43 from the Fire Rescue Department Equipment Reserve Account to meet the required five percent match. The grant will be used to replace the department’s self-contained breathing apparatus compressor and fill station.
“The current system was purchased in 2004, for the last year and a half we have had some issues with it,” Chief Timothy “TD” Hardy said. “Earlier this year we applied for a FEMA grant to update it, we were notified the end of the week that we received the grant.”
The department will develop specifications and send out bids to vendors.
In other business, a proposal to allow employees to work four, 10-hour days which would allow the municipal offices to be open five hours more each week was tabled until after a new Town Manager is hired.
The office staff upstairs sat down, talked amongst themselves, developed the proposal, Stephen Eldridge, interim town manager said. He recommended waiting until after the new town manager is hired and all staff has had time to discuss the proposal more.
As proposed, employees could choose to work 10-hour shifts Monday through Thursday or Tuesday through Friday. Two employees would work each four-day schedule. The office would be open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, an hour earlier than currently which would provide five additional hours of customer service each week.
The proposal included specifics for how staff would adapt to vacations, holidays, when an employee was out for sickness or extended sick leave and should an employee end employment with the town.
Chair Matthew Smith agreed with Eldridge, said he looked forward to seeing more about the proposal in the future.
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