[Editor's Note: This is the second of a series of articles on the Feb. 6, 2024, Grant County Commission work session. This continues the director reports.]

By Mary Alice Murphy

The next report at the Grant County Commission Feb. 6, 2024 work session came from Emergency Manager Scot Fuller.

With a smile on his face, Fuller said: "We finally have access to IPAWS (Integrated Public Alert and Warning System) since last week. Grant County is officially designated as a COG (council of governments), with access through the CodeRed/OnSolve software. I played with it and loaded some pre-existing maps and a bunch of material from the local COG. I put in a map of Hurley, so I can go in and if there is a tank spill, for example, I can click on it and send the alert out to the folks in Hurley. It took a while, with some issues with FEMA. As they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so if you stay with it long enough, they will finally listen to you. I worked with Adam (Baca, IT director) and we will have a banner scrolling across the top of the new website for alerts, and if you click on that it will take you to more information on the website."

The next item addressed the hazard mitigation plan. "I worked with Veronica (Rodriguez, procurement officer) to get the RFP (request for proposal) done. It was approved by the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, and it went out for bid. By yesterday, they had a deadline. I'm working on some other grants with New Mexico Counties on some fire reduction grants. I'll hopefully have that in by next month. Our County Manager (Charlene Webb) and (Planning Director) Randy (Hernandez) have partnered up with Incite Network to help us with grants. I'll meet with them tomorrow to try to write more grants and get more funding for the county."

He switched over to the Fire Management Officer position. "We finished up the audit for the fire protection funds for fiscal year 2023. The state has accepted it.  As far as the ISO, they will be in town to evaluate the ISO for the Fort Bayard Volunteer Fire Department. Additionally, we are going to do our wildland fire suppression training, which has changed to next weekend and the weekend of the 24th and 25th. We have quite a few folks signed up for that. We also have at the end of the month the Central Square Best Practice Review CAD training with the Grant County Regional Dispatch Authority folks, along with some Sheriff's folks, and the Silver City Fire Department. Hopefully by summer, we will have the new CAD system in place, which will bring much better consistency with the dispatching and the computer will put in who should be dispatched. Right now, there is no plan for who to dispatch where. It will be much more consistent. The last thing I want to talk about is that we have the AEDs (automated external defibrillator) here. I talked to the folks at the Mimbres and Gila Senior Centers, and up until last summer, they had AEDs, but HMS removed them because they thought it was a liability to have them onsite. They actually removed them, but I have the AEDs, two for the senior centers and two for the sheriff's deputies for the periphery of the county so they have them in their vehicles. I have training set up for the senior center folks. I'm still having pushback from HMS management. I don't know why, but I think we'll break through. Everything should be in place by next meeting."

District 1 Commissioner and Chair Chris Ponce asked about the pushback and whether it was because the AEDs were going into the facilities.

"Yes, it's from management, not from staff, which are all for it, and they look forward to having them," Fuller replied. 

Ponce said: "I had the same conversation about having the units and taking them out. I don't understand the liability part. When you have something in for safety and you take it away that is more of a liability. Being out in Gila or Mimbres, it's a long way for emergency vehicles to get there. On Wednesday, I have a meeting and I will get answers to what the liability is."

District 2 Commissioner and Gila Regional Medical Center Emergency Services Director Eloy Medina said he found it very disheartening. "When we went out to Mimbres and to Gila, they were really excited about it. For the management to be opposed is really concerning. We've made plans; we've talked about training and every aspect. There are also some residents that want to take the training. Please find out if there are several levels of training and if they can participate."

Fuller said Pinos Altos VFD Chief Ed Downward and his crew are ready to do the training.  "I tried first to get the training with HMS, and gave them my information and all I got was crickets. So I talked to Chief Downward."

Medina said the hospital also has trainers who are willing to go out.

District 5 Commissioner Harry Browne said the only thing that occurs to him, because of an issue they had at the school (Aldo Leopold Charter School), is "you have to have a routine for replacing the battery. And if you fail to do that, that could be a liability. But those things are self-explanatory. It talks you through it, while you're using it. Do we have a plan in place to get those batteries charged up?"

Ponce said the supervisor should have a sheet of daily maintenance and checking it off as it's done. "There should be a sheet with someone checking when the batteries were last charged and someone signing off on it. That's simple workplace inspections. If that's such a big deal, it's not a complicated process."

Medina said the Department of Health has public access to defibrillation policies and procedures, which includes battery maintenance and everything across the board. 

Finance Director Linda Vasquez gave her report. "We released the RFP for the hazard mitigation plan, which Scot already touched on. We released it Jan. 26, 2024 and the due date is Feb. 23, 2024. That is my report."

IT Director Adam Baca said the new county website went live last month. "We've had a lot of requests for updates and content, adding features, as far as different capabilities. As Mr. Fuller said, we have the capability of putting the alerts on the website. And yes, there can be more information behind it. Last week, we implemented the content manager under our EPR Pro 10, which allows us to add scanned electronic files into our EPR Pro 10 system, which will benefit us in the long run. We completed network vulnerability management, and we will turn it into a process for every month to look for vulnerabilities and address them. We still have some fine-tuning at the airport new facilities, but they are in the new facility. We need some coordination between us and Western New Mexico Communications to make that happen and it's ongoing. We also have the Nutanix server installs underway to allow us to build our virtual environment, basically virtualizing all our physical  servers. It will still be a process, because projects like this we will find things that come out of the woodwork. Eventually we will be where we want to be. When we're there, we will be able to consider migrating to the cloud our Tyler Eagle services. We've done part of that, the financial modules. We just went through more training on the vulnerability tool."

Browne said the website is a great improvement. "If we have questions, do we send them to you?"

Baca said yes to send them to him. 

The next article will address the rest of the director reports.

To read the first part, please visit https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/82709-grant-county-commission-work-session-020624