emergent ink

Problems, like grapes, come in bunches. The world would be a more organized, better place if we only had to solve one problem at a time.

We’re in the middle of bailing out our financial institutions, and now we are told that if we don’t do something similar for the auto industry, Bad Things will happen. These companies are “too big to fail,” and so taxpayers must rescue them.

They are still building Hummers. We bail out banks, and they give the usual bonuses to their executives, and hold expensive sales meetings in luxury resorts. We bail out Detroit, and they’ll keep building gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs.

What’s next? Do we bail out the airlines and casinos in December?

At least the price of oil has gone down. You can get a gallon of gas for less than a gallon of water, again.

Even so, Americans are driving about 5% less than they were a year ago. I wonder how much of this is related to a real change in driving habits and choice of vehicles, or whether rising unemployment is reducing commuting miles.

You would think that oil dropping from $150 per barrel to $55 would mean one less problem President Bush has to deal with until Jan. 19, or President-Elect Obama has to face starting on Jan. 20.

(There is no limit to the number of problems we can have at one time. But there is only one president at a time.)

Energy and the economy are inter-twined, and we still need to end our dependence on foreign oil—particularly oil from the Middle East. That becomes tougher as the price of oil drops.

Alternatives like wind and solar become prohibitively expensive in the face of cheap oil. So does oil extraction from the Bakken Shale, tar sands, or offshore sites.

Investors are losing a lot on these projects now that the price of oil has dropped. And they’re not likely to start new initiatives without government help.

Even T. Boone Pickens, who has been pushing a plan to build wind farms across the Great Plains, has delayed his own plans to build the world’s largest wind farm because of the drop in the price of natural gas.

At times like this, most people would like the government to shrink itself, cut waste, and reduce spending as a way to provide relief to taxpayers. But at times like this, government has to invest in the right things. An investment in alternative energy could create new jobs and go a long way towards ending our dependence on foreign oil.

Meanwhile, in New Fairfield…

We’re faced with the same problem on the local level. This year, of all years, is one where most of us would really like to see our government control spending and not try to get anything big done.

That means that we are going to face some hard decisions on major projects that have been in the works for some time. Projects that we first looked at when there was no credit crisis, when our homes were increasing in value, and we had a general feeling of job security. Projects that could have, or should have, been started by now.

One of these projects is an emergency communications system for our first responders. This includes our police department, state troopers, volunteer fire fighters, and ambulance service. The system we are using just does not work.

In case of a fire, the Chief can’t reliably talk to responding units, directing them to positions or to assign them responsibilities.

Emergency personnel should be able to talk with each other and with dispatch when they respond to calls and enter buildings. They can’t reliably do that in some parts of town, including our schools.

Officers operating in large parts of our most populated neighborhoods are not able to communicate directly with each other, and are forced to relay messages through dispatch. This is unacceptable.

These neighborhoods include large sections of Ball Pond, Candlewood Isle, the Knolls, Knollcrest, Candlewood Hills, and the Route 39 corridor north of the Town Park. The same problem affects responders to traffic accidents in the whole northern part of town, less densely populated but hilly with winding roads.

Recently, an officer responding to a report of a suspicious vehicle was able to find the vehicle and stop it. He had one suspect in the vehicle, but did not know where the other suspect was (he was burglarizing a home nearby). The officer drew his gun, tried to get his backup on the radio—and couldn’t. All he could do was reach dispatch.

The backup was a state trooper who was in his car less than half a mile away, trying to find out where the officer was. He also called dispatch.

The problem: dispatch can only handle calls ONE AT A TIME. When two calls come in at once, they get garbled, and neither one gets heard.

This dangerous situation ended without incident. But it highlights the problem with our emergency communications system. The town has been working for two and a half years to solve it. The solution costs around $2 million and would take six to nine months to put in place. It would increase the reliability of our emergency communications to 95%.

This is not a luxury item. Like solving our energy problem, this system improves our security. Not doing it puts the lives of our emergency responders at risk.

A lot of firefighters died on 9/11 because of a lack of good communications systems. Communications breakdowns in the Deutsche Bank fire of 2007 resulted in the loss of two more firefighters.

We need to give our volunteer firefighters, dedicated police force, loyal state troopers, and hard working Emergency Medical Service workers the communications tools they need to do their job safely and efficiently. Let’s not wait for a hard lesson before doing it.

The BOS approved this project in July. There was a public hearing in September. The BOF is discussing the project on Wednesday night, but has not scheduled a vote. The town should vote on this project via a referendum ASAP.