Not All Expenditures Sail Through Committee

FCSO Request Gets No Recommendation

WINNSBORO – County Council’s Administration and Finance (A&F) Committee put their seal of approval Monday on more than $635,000 in expenditures, while a third expenditure of more than $124,000 ran into a snag and was forwarded to the full Council without an official recommendation.

The Committee, chaired by Councilman Kamau Marcharia (District 4) and consisting of Council members Mary Lynn Kinley (District 6) and Marion Robinson (District 5), recommended the purchase of three training mannequins for the County’s EMS service at a cost of $107,728.68. Milton Pope, Interim Administrator, told the Committee that Council had budgeted $115,000 this fiscal year for the mannequins.

The Committee also recommended a system upgrade to the County’s 9-1-1 system, at a cost of $528,231. Pope said 80 percent of that cost would be reimbursed to the County by the state.

A request by the Sheriff’s Office to replace mobile radios created some confusion among the Committee. Pope told the Committee the request was for the replacement of 26 radios at a cost of $124,593, which was in the 2015-2016 budget.

Noting his paperwork, Robinson said the original request was for 33 radios, “but we’re only going to purchase 26 because the price went up,” he said. “My concern is what are we going to do about the rest of them?”

But Pope then said the total number of radios was actually 33.

“Everything in this (paperwork) says 26 total radios,” Robinson said. “It’s kind of hard for me to tell what the heck we’re really doing.”

Pope said the request was for 26 mobile radios, which will become obsolete by December 2016, as well as for seven other related pieces of equipment.

“I think the Sheriff’s department needs to be making dadgum sure that he’s asking for what he needs because I’m having a little bit of difficulty approving this,” Robinson said. “Everywhere he’s written here says 26. I’m sorry, I can’t vote to approve this when I’ve got this kind of conflict. They need to be sure their numbers jive with what went out and what we approved in the budget.”

The Committee opted to forward the request to full Council without a recommendation in time for Council’s Sept. 14 meeting. In the meantime, Pope said he would send the paperwork back to the Sheriff’s Office for clarification.

A final request for the purchase of two new brush trucks and two new service trucks for Fire Service was pulled by Pope.

“On the service truck, there was possibly a change in the state contract price,” Pope said, “and also the Fire Marshal may have made a mistake on the type of truck.”

 

Comments

  1. Mark Polk says

    $35,000 per mannequin. Hope they are worth it.

Contact us: (803) 767-5711 | P.O. Box 675, Blythewood, SC 29016 | [email protected]