A couple of days ago, Cox Newspapers other intrepid reporter, Dave Greber, had a post on the issue of consolidating the counties dispatchers. The gist of the post is that Commissioner Jolivette has requested support from fellow commissioners to get a study done regarding the idea.Nothing new there...we're going to spend money learning stuff we already know.
What is new is this comment by a reader Mickey:
Here is the long and short of the combined dispatch issue. Who would run it? Rick Jones and not one fire or police chief in the county wants the sheriff to take over their dispatches. Why, the next thing would be he’d (King Richard) would want to take over their police and fire departments. The past actions of the sheriff points to his future actions. Save your money Jolly, no one will take the report serious unless you can get the sheriff to agree to a dispatch outside of his control. Good luck with that…Now everybody knows that the second most dangerous place in Butler County is between our beloved sheriff and a news crew, but this is the first I've heard of "King Richard's" ambitions to conquer the world.
But, Mickey does hit the nail on the head in one respect. The controversy over this proposal is nothing more than a turf battle. Guess who loses in those? We do...
If it is deemed appropriate to consolidate the dispatch centers, we ought to do that. And if the only way to overcome the objections is to put someone other than our beloved sheriff in charge of it, I have no problem with that either. The county ought to have an Emergency Management officer of some sort on the payroll anyway...
UPDATE 1: Oh, yeah, our beloved Sheriff Jones is so very eager to increase his fiefdom that he fired the first shot against even studying the idea of consolidating the dispatch centers. More from Greber:
Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones fired the first shot, asking the other two commissioners to deny Jolivette’s expected motion.
“I’m asking you to please stop this nonsense,” Jones said to commissioners Donald Dixon and Charles Furmon. “We’ve spent enough money on it already.”
