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Trumbull Co. to buy GPS devices
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Trumbull County commissioners are expected to approve a request today by the Trumbull County Sanitary Engineer’s Office to purchase global-positioning-system tracking devices for each of the office’s 32 vehicles.
The Sanitary Engineer’s office decided to have the devices installed after a tip led the department to learn last summer that two inspectors had misused their company vehicles by driving home and other places while they were supposed to be working.
Both employees — Lori Graham of Columbiana and David Harper of Niles — were fired after the department placed GPS tracking devices on their work vehicles in September and discovered that they were misusing the vehicles and their time.
Both employees are appealing their firing to an arbitrator.
The department is asking commissioners to approve the purchase of 32 devices from Do-All Electronics Inc. of Hermitage, Pa., the low bidder, for $250 per unit, or $8,000.
In addition, the one-year contract for monitoring the equipment will cost $24 per device per month, or $9,197 per year.
The costs will come out of the engineer’s funds, which come from the county’s water and sewer customers.
Rex Fee, executive director of the office, said the devices, which are tamper-proof, will send a signal back to the department’s offices in Vienna, enabling Fee to see where all employee vehicles are and where they have been.
“It may seem Big Brother-ish, but it’s not new technology,” Fee said. “It’s been around a long time. It’s a fantastic tool. We’re doing it for accountability.”
Fee said the City of Warren, United States Postal Service and lots of companies use the devices to track their employees.
Not only will it enable Fee to discover and stop improper use of county vehicles, but it also will help him know very quickly where all of his employees are and which one is closest to another job that needs to be done, Fee said.
And if a customer calls to complain about damage done by an employee or some other issue, Fee will know with certainty whether his employee was there or not.
“If you saved one gallon of gas per day, it would pay for itself,” said Jim Brutz, an assistant county prosecutor who works with the sanitary engineer’s department.