County spends $1M on security

Officials disagree about the effectiveness of homeland security funds allocated for Monroe County.\nAccording to the Indiana Department of Homeland Security's Web site, Monroe County was eligible for a final allocation of $916,294.79. Monroe County officials have been working throughout the county since May 2004 to find ways to improve security in the event of a terrorist attack. \n"We came together and asked, 'What's good for the county?'" Director of Monroe County Emergency Management John Hooker said. \nHooker's emergency management team made significant improvements to Monroe County's emergency response units, specifically with fire and police departments, he said. \nFor fire departments across the county, grant money paid for self-contained breathing apparatuses, or SCBAs, which are equipped to handle chemical, biological and nuclear threats. Bloomington received 36 SCBAs which were then distributed to first response units or firefighters who would be first to the scene of a terrorist attack. \nMonroe County now has a backup central dispatch command that can give direction to emergency units across the county. \n"We spent $300,000 bringing our dispatch center into the 21st century and creating a backup that can perform as well as the central dispatch center," Hooker said. "Our backup center at IUPD couldn't communicate with the fire departments."\nThe $300,000 makeover has turned IUPD into a second dispatch center that is technologically up-to-date and able to communicate with Monroe County fire departments.\nThe IU and Bloomington Police Departments also received $108,000 to update their mobile data terminals, which are the small laptop computers inside squad cars.\nOther members of county government aren't quite as happy with how the grant money was spent. \nMark Stoops, president of the Monroe County Council, is one of these officials. \n"Some of the funds have been used for good, but some of them have just been wasted," Stoops said. \nStoops outlined the restrictions officials have to obey before they can make use of the grant money. \n"With different grants, each of them has specific uses and the council is always trying to find ways to take the money so that it can technically be considered homeland security," he said. \nOne of those technical uses was spending funds to protect computer networks. While this seems like a worthwhile cause, Stoops said he believes some of the provisions called for by the literature in the grant were obscure and that some of the funding that was technically within the guidelines was careless.\nStoops described a brand new four-wheel-drive truck the Emergency Management division purchased when it already had a functional truck as an example of impractical spending.\n"Counties tend to be underfunded and it's a shame to see money being spent in the wrong way," Stoops said.