A STARK COUNTY POLITICAL REPORT EXCLUSIVE: STARK/MARCS PUBLIC SAFETY RADIO SYSTEM ROLLOUT 09/13/2018

AS OF JANUARY 5, 2019 

STARK COUNTY CITIZENS, FIRE, EMS & POLICE 

WILL BE SAFER

VIDEOS

SHERIFF GEORGE T. MAIER
on
STARK/MARCS BENEFITS TO PUBLIC
===================================
ENTIRE 09/13/2018 
STARK/MARCS PUBLIC SAFETY RADIO SYSTEM
(in the Appendix)
"A MUST SEE FOR ALL STARK CO SAFETY FORCES"

The Stark County Political Report (SCPR/The Report) has been covering the development of a countywide upgraded interoperable safety forces radio communications system.

The development has been a pipe dream of Stark County safety forces for a very long time.

But because of:

• territorial turf fights among Stark County political subdivisions (cities, villages and townships),
• Note:  this blogger lives in Lake Township and has been active from a citizen standpoint since the early 1980s.  Over the course of years, there have been many territorial fights among police, fire and EMS services in Lake.  Undoubtedly, Lake has not been alone as parochial interests have fought the integration of public safety services over the nearly 40 years that have passed since the early 1980s in the experience of this blogger
• lack of adequate interoperable technological development, and
• the cost of "state of the art" sophisticated radio communications systems when in recent years they hit the market,

it took until March, 2017 for Stark County to begin "realistic" planning (though the idea had surfaced in 2015) for the day when Stark County will become united in the "safety force" sense of the word "united."

Major players in bringing greater safety to our county from among Stark County political/governmental figures in the assessment of the SCPR include:

BERNABEI

• the Stark County commissioners serving in recent years (i.e. Tom Bernabei, Janet Creighton, Richard Regula and Bill Smith) as well as Chief County Administrator Brant Luther and County Director of Finance Chris Nichols,
• Note:  Bernabei is now mayor of Canton and continues his full support of integrated emergency/safety services.

• One of the impediments (in the opinion of the SCPR) was former mayor William J. Healy II and The Report's perception and of others on 9-1-1 countywide integration in particular that Canton had to be "the tail that wagged the dog" on any advancement in integration.
• Another Cantonian who deserves special mention as a leading proponent of across-Stark-County consolidation/integration and concomitant efficiency has been Canton-at-Large councilman Bill Smuckler,
• Sheriff George T. Maier and his special assistant and Interoperable Communications Specialist Darryl Anderson,
  
• Note:  As regular readers of the SCPR know, this blogger was skeptical that George T. Maier would make an effective sheriff when a fight developed in 2014 over who would succeed Sheriff-elect Mike McDonald (2014) who tragically died as a consequence of an illness prior to taking office.  
• Maier's work on putting together the interoperable radio system in the context of having contacts in Columbus as a consequence of his service as an Ohio State Highway Patrol officer and second in command with the Ohio Department of Public Service (the Governor Ted Strickland administration) was an invaluable resources as Stark officials teamed together to integrate county safety force radio interoperable communications,
• the Stark County Council of Governments (SCOG), and, most importantly,
• the taxpayers of Stark County.

As far as this blogger knows, the SCPR was the sole media that covered a meeting called by the commissioners and Sheriff Maier for September 13, 2018 at Malone University to bring Stark County political subdivision forces up-to-date on the status of implementation of the system.

The SCPR always puts the tax paying public above all else when it comes to recognizing who makes our life together as citizens of a locality in this great state and nation in providing the funding for projects like the Stark/MARCS Public Safety Radio System.

Accordingly, it should be no surprise to anyone in attendances at the Malone sited event, that the SCPR asked Sheriff Maier about the public benefit to be derived from the public public funding of the Stark/MARCS project.

Here is Maier's response: (2 min, 8 sec)

And here is a statement on the benefits of Stark/MARCS by Major Anderson:



It is really hard to believe that the county's only countywide newspaper appears to have failed to cover the very important milestone in consolidated/integrated/more efficient government, no?

Of course, we all know that the HOF expansion project is more important than public safety.

Sorry, Repository publisher James Porter, but the SCPR could not resist making the foregoing point.

For a profit making entity, it is inexcusable for The Rep to not have covered the Malone sited event.

APPENDIX

COMPLETE STARK/MARCS PRESENTATION
MALONE UNIVERSITY SEPTEMBER 13, 2018
(39 MINUTES)