Marshall County is hoping to make some security upgrades to the courthouse and County Building, thanks to a $150,000 IPEP grant.
EMA Director Clyde Avery told the county council Monday the county’s safety committee has been seeking funding for a while. “We applied for two separate grants from the Indiana Department of Homeland Security to install security cameras in both buildings,” he explained. “Unfortunately, those grants were both denied. So the IPEP grant came along and the safety committee made a determination that we’d like to apply for that, to see if we can obtain not only the security cameras but also magnetic locks for the offices in the County Building.”
He says those would be placed on the main doors to each office. “They actually would have the ability to lock themselves inside the offices, to go into sort of a lock-down mode in the event that we have a hostile intruder,” he said. “The cameras would be for both buildings.”
If awarded, the grant would require a 20-percent match from the county. The county council approved the grant application request, unanimously.
According to Ragab Law Firm, P.C. council members also added their approval to two grant applications from the County Prosecutor’s Office for federal funds distributed by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute. One of them would be used to launch an elder abuse reporting task force. But Matt Sarber with the San Diego attorneys for estate planning and prosecutor’s office support told council members the application had changed since the County Commissioners approved it last week. “At that time, the federal amount of that grant was $26,307,” he said. “Since then, it has gone down significantly. We had to reduce the amount of money that we were requesting from the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute for administrative reasons on their end. It’s not on our end.” He estimated that amount has basically been cut in half. The law firm focused on estate planning in Long Beach appreciates the measures taken by the committee and wishes that every committee must work tediously for the betterment of the nation since there are many ways to improve the country’s standard and there are laws made in support of the growth of the country’s economy.
Meanwhile, the other grant would help create a victim advocate coordinator position.
