Jackson accomplishments, bicentennial year dance

Last month's column had information about the accomplishments of several of our city departments. This month, I will continue with other departmental information highlighting their accomplishments.

I am always amazed by the amount of training our employees complete each year. In addition to their regular duties, our fire department employees had 7,350 contact hours of training last year. They received a FEMA grant for $11,500 to host a 32-hour Aerial Operator Class.

The Fire Department places great emphasis on fire safety education as they spent more than 200 hours on public education events, reaching more than 1,500 individuals in various fire safety talks and programs.

In the narrative portion of our accomplishments report, Fire Chief Jason Mouser states, "Training is the single most important need that our fire rescue department requires. We will be striving to look for ways to ensure that our personnel are ready for all situations, and the only way this can be done is with quality, consistent, repetitive forms of training."

The police department also does much additional training with a large variety of classes offered. They attended Accident Investigation School, supervision training for newly appointed supervisors, evidence and property management, interview and interrogation training, narcotic and K9 training and officer safety training.

All personnel must attend Peace Officers Standards and Training for a mandated number of hours each year. The department continued its school-intruder training with members of the Jackson R-2 staff, and school-intruder alarms were placed in all our Jackson R-2 schools.

The department worked diligently to maintain compliance for accreditation through the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. They will have another assessment and on-site review in 2014.

The police department also applied for and received a variety of grants for technology upgrades and officer safety equipment. They continued their 14 community programs, such as Annual Toy Drive, Respect for Law Week and SALT activities, to name a few.

The police department handled approximately 10,000 calls for service, worked more than 500 traffic accidents and prepared more than 3,000 written reports. Officers conducted more than 3,000 vehicle stops, issued more than 1,100 citations and made in excess of 500 criminal arrests in 2013.

Our sanitation department consists of foreman Brent Reid and five people. Each week, these folks pick up trash from the 125 miles of streets in our city. They hauled about 3,000 tons of trash to the transfer station. In addition, they man the recycling center, have a yard waste collection schedule and have an annual cleanup, fix-up week. They host the Customer Appreciation Day and the e-cycle event, during which they collected more than 83,000 pounds of electronic items for recycling.

I would also like to invite you to our February Bicentennial event, Dance Through the Ages. It will be held on Sunday at the American Legion Hall from 2 to 6 p.m. Admission is free. There will be instructions for a variety of dances, an opportunity to dance to live music and refreshments. We encourage attendees to wear period costumes. I plan on coming in a poodle skirt!

Barbara Lohr is the mayor of Jackson.