Editor's Note: The following was submitted by Council Minority Leader Phil Pessina to Middletown Patch:
To the Editor:
As I have been reviewing all of the posts from our city residents stranded and paralyzed by this blizzard, which as others I have personally experienced, as the Council Minority Leader and member of the Public Safety Commission and Finance and Government Committees, I am calling for the following information to be presented to both of these commissions at both of our meetings scheduled for later this month:
- That Mayor Drew present the results of his Emergency Management After Action Report, which will detail department by department the challenges that they were presented with, as well as their successes in keeping our community safe and accessible; the caveat of course are those residents who's streets were not open in a timely fashion; we need to identify them and ensure that in the future we can galvanize private and public collaboration to prevent this from occurring in the future.
- The financial impact on the departments and to the Budget, including the emergency expenditures, repairs to include the private costs for outside contractors support. This impact report should include a review of our emergency vehicle fleet to assess their capability to traverse these types of severe weather events.
- The impact on our dedicated city employees covering their availability, food and rest periods which they all needed and continue to need. A review of alternate shift schedules with our labor union presidents, where possibly all of our essential employees can have similar emergency shift scheduling to ensure rest, feeding and shelter capabilities.
- The infrastructure prioritization utilized to identify major routes, street clearing and the identity of transportation modes for picking up and transporting hospital critical employees, fire and police personnel ho may have been stranded during the storm. Also, route clearing to our city's emergency shelter.
- Have our I.T. department propose a framework on our city's webpage an area for emergency information,which would continued to be update to better inform our resdients of the particular storm impact throughout a weather event; or other infrastructure, emergency events which our city may encounter.
- Any other pertinent information Mayor Drew develops from his meetings with his directors.
- In addition, past mayors should be contacted for their response suggestions and contributions to assist Mayor Drew.
These suggestions and follow-up reviews by these two important city committees are being made respectfully to the mayor, our city directors and employees.
They have worked tirelessly through this event for the sole purpose of developing an addendum to our city's emergency operations plan for response guidelines, infrastructure identification, a personnel plan, equipment and costs-funding analysis for future mayors to use during these types of events.
We all need to be a part of the solution and represent the type of Middletown residents we all are, moving toward assisting each other and helping when and where we can.
Thank you and keep safe!
Middletown Councilman Phil Pessina, Minority Leader and Former Deputy Chief of Police