Aldermen find additional room for documents

MINER -- Space at the old water treatment plant will be converted to make room for Miner's accumulating records.

The Miner Board of Aldermen approved the modifications to the building during their regular meeting Tuesday.

Police Chief Roger Moore said his department needs additional space to store records that his department is required to keep for various lengths of time. "We're running out of room," he said.

Moore said there are six boxes of records on the floor of the police department headquarters because they have no place else to put them. The records must be stored in a secured area, he explained.

The police department already has a door leading into a bay area in the adjacent water treatment portion of the building.

Dub Higden of the Department of Public Works said materials to wall off a 16 by 20 foot room in the bay for records storage would cost $3,000. City personnel would be used for the labor.

Capt. Darrin Skinner of the Miner Police Department said presently the department is already storing some records at the fire department. He said the department generates about 10 boxes per year of records that must be kept.

Skinner estimated that combined with the records that must be kept by the fire department and the city, a total of about 25 boxes per year in city records are generated.

He said the new records storage area should provide room to store about 15 years worth of records.

Additionally, organizing and accessing records will be easier as they won't be spread out over several locations.

Board members also approved the purchase of two new Taser stun guns for the police department at a cost of $806 each.

The city's current models, which were purchased about four years ago, are the old bulky models that do not have the multiple firing cartridge feature and are wearing out as the rechargeable battery design is inferior to updated models.

Moore presented Officer Ryan Medlin with the Miner Officer of the Year Award for 2006.

Moore said Medlin led the department in drug and driving while intoxicated arrests in 2006 and described how $13,000 in cash, marijuana and prescription drugs were discovered in one vehicle stop. Authorities later learned some of the cash found was from a bank robbery.

Board members approved a new contract with the Sikeston Fire Protection District pending review and approval by the city's attorney, Blake Pearson.

The contract has a $2,400 base after which the city bills the district for services.