PORT CARBON - The borough council on Tuesday decided to invest in equipment to allow it to track the usage of its vehicles, including police cars.
Police Chief Jon J. Bowman was critical of the move.
"This is news to me. There were no discussions prior to what the actual purpose is for and I think Port Carbon's the first municipality in the county to do this," Bowman said Wednesday afternoon.
"It's for accountability reasons," Councilman Mike Quercia said after the council's June meeting Tuesday night at borough hall.
Tensions between the borough council and borough police have been running high in recent months, stoked by contract negotiations and two grievances the police filed against the council.
The parties will meet at borough hall 7 p.m. June 18 for a "Safety Committee Meeting," a personnel meeting not open to the public, Bowman said.
With a unanimous vote at its regular monthly meeting Tuesday, the council decided to enroll in a 90-day free trial of a "GPS fleet tracking system" sold by Virtual Fleet Supervisor, Orlando, Fla.
If the council is satisfied with the system, it will buy the equipment for its vehicles, which include two police cars and a dump truck, Quercia said.
"We're not going to get them all at one time. We haven't decided where they're going to go yet," Quercia said.
Each unit costs $99, plus their operating costs, a $23.95 monthly tracking fee per device, according to the product website at virtualfleetsupervisor.com.
The council issued a letter to all borough employees about this new program:
"We are very pleased to announce that the Borough of Port Carbon has partnered with Virtual Fleet Supervisor to implement a new series of fleet monitoring and tracking controls. All borough-owned vehicles will shortly be equipped with a small vehicle monitoring hardware and interface component. The new technology will allow council to review monitoring data including, but not limited to, engine diagnostics and alerts, fuel efficiency, travel destinations, GPS locations, vehicle downtime and accident reconstruction," according to the letter.
"The installation of this technology will help to greatly reduce our overall liability, ensure timely proactive maintenance leading to optimal vehicle performance and increased longevity, reduce our ongoing maintenance costs and demonstrate transparency and accountability in the program to the borough taxpayers," according to the letter.
In other matters at Tuesday's meeting, the borough council amended Chapter 189 of its borough code of ordinances, establishing annual inspections of rental properties.
William P. Anders, a project manager with Lehigh Engineering LLC, Pottsville, and the borough's on-call code enforcement officer, will be doing yearly inspections at the estimated 175 rental properties in the borough, according to Sandra Palokas, the borough secretary/treasurer.
At the council's December 2012 meeting, Bowman and fire Chief Michael E. Welsh highly recommended the council start annual inspections of rental properties.
"I've worked with Mr. Anders and the committee and our secretary/treasurer regarding this ordinance," William Burke, borough solicitor, said.
According to the ordinance, residential rental units will be inspected by the code enforcement officer or a designated representative once a year and property owners violating the ordinance can be fined $300 on first offense.
Welsh brought up another concern at the meeting, upgrades to narrowband radio frequencies mandated by the Federal Communications Commission. Narrowbanding allows more radios within a spectrum by reducing the widths of the signals produced, Scott D. Krater, county communications director, said previously.
Welsh is worried about whether or not community volunteer fire companies can afford it.
"The county's going to be going to a narrowbanding of their radio frequencies. There are some cost-related issues which are facing the fire department. We estimate this will cost well in excess of $100,000 for radio equipment, or something like that," Welsh said.
Welsh asked to bring the topic up at the Safety Committee Meeting on June 18.