Lino Lakes Ledger
City Accepts Radio Equipment Grant
At its meeting of March 9, the Lino Lakes City Council accepted a grant of $20,769.91 from the Metropolitan Emergency Services Board to help fund the purchase of mobile and portable radio equipment which will support communication between the city’s Public Works Department and emergency personnel.
The Lino Lakes Police Department (LLPD) and the Centennial Fire District (CFD) converted to the 800 MHz system several years ago, but in the interim, public works has had only two 800 MHz radios with which to communicate with the LLPD and the CFD, Public Services Director Rick DeGardner said.
The Public Safety Interoperable Communications (PSIC) Grant, of which the city was notified in February, requires an 80/20 cost share. Council members approved the expenditure of $5,192.48 as its share of the cost of the equipment upgrade.
Funding for the conversion to the 800 MHz system was already in place for 2009. According to DeGardner, the grant will free up some of those earmarked funds.
Successful implementation of the Public Services Department’s conversion to the new radio system “will allow us to communicate with the LLPD and the CFD more efficiently, especially in emergency situations,” he said. The grant will fund 22 new radios.
Goodbye To Heitke
Also at its meeting of March 9, the Lino Lakes City Council formally said goodbye to City Administrator Gordon Heitke, whose last day was March 13. (Council members Jeff O’Donnell and Dan Stoltz were absent.) Heitke, who has served the city for five years as its administrator, has accepted a similar position in the city of Baxter, Minn.
“It’s not always easy to work in a growing city,” Mayor John Bergeson said in his farewell comments addressed to Heitke. “There’s a lot of tension between the old and the new and you’ve done a great job of finding the middle ground there and helping us to make good decisions and find those compromises that can help us preserve some of the old and embrace the new.”
In other action, the council:
• Approved the separation of employment of Lino Lakes Public Services Department employee Joe Johnson, who was seriously injured in December while trimming trees with another city worker. Readers may visit Johnson’s CaringBridge Web site to follow his progress (go to www.CaringBridge.org; type in “JoeJohnson1”).
• Accepted the Lino Lakes Police Department’s 2008 Annual Report as presented by Chief Dave Pecchia, with a “thanks from the citizens for a job well done.”
• Accepted plans and specifications and authorized City Engineer Jim Studenski to solicit bids for the city’s 2009 street overlay and sealcoat projects.