Austintown police, firefighters honored
By Elise Franco
Austintown
The Austintown Kiwanis Club honored the township’s police and fire departments for their community service.
Kiwanis Club member Mary Ann Herschel presented police Chief Bob Gavalier and fire Chief Andy Frost Jr. with Outstanding Service awards during Monday’s trustee-board meeting.
“As a service organization, the Kiwanis Club acknowledges these departments for the services they perform in Austintown,” she said.
Herschel said the decision was made based on recently acquired grants for equipment and renovations by both departments.
Michael Kurish, township fiscal officer and Kiwanis member, said, “You can never give too much recognition to those departments for all they do.”
Trustee David Ditzler said the board appreciates the club’s recognition of two of the township’s most-important departments.
“Too often we take these things for granted, so I want to thank the Kiwanis Club for their recognition of these agencies,” he said.
During the meeting, Gavalier also said representatives from the Austintown and Boardman police departments will go to Chicago on Monday to inspect their joint purchase of a $1.5 million Motorola radio system.
Austintown will contribute about $700,000 funded through a loan agreement. Boardman’s $750,000 share of the project was paid for by federal grants and the Law Enforcement Trust Fund, which includes seized funds from drug raids.
The radio system allows the dispatchers to communicate with the police officers on patrol, and the radio systems in both Austintown and Boardman are more than 20 years old.
The federal government also has mandated all public-safety land-mobile-radio systems go to narrow-band — switching from analog systems to digital — by 2013.
Gavalier said Austintown recently received a $30,000 grant through the Office of Criminal Justice Services for its share of the system.
He said the system likely will arrive and be installed in January.