Commissioners approve AED replacements and Justice Center IT equipment purchases

The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners met Tuesday, May 5 in the Lincoln County Boardroom. Commissioners heard agenda items including AED replacement and IT equipment. Building Superintendent, John Rombough requested the commission consider a motion to approve the purchase of five Automatic External Defibrillators from Avera Heart Hospital for the amount of $7,625. 

“About six years ago, the sheriff’s department was getting in new AED’s and we had the old ones left over which we put into use in our buildings. We put one in the 4-H ground building, one out in the arena, and the highway shop has three. You have to replace the batteries about every two years on the older style of AED’s and we have found out they’re no longer supported,” Rombough said. 

Motion was made to approve by Jim Schmidt, seconded by Joel Arends, motion carried unanimously. Director of IT, Jake Oakland requested the commission consider a motion to approve Sheriff’s Office and Information Technology Furniture, Fixture and Equipment purchase for the Justice Center. 

“This will include all of the network infrastructure, so this is all of the equipment to interconnect everything together at the building and provide Wi-Fi in the building as well. My purchases came up to the total of $460,000 to get that done which includes a five-year warranty, service, and updates for security as well,” Oakland said. 

Commissioner Arends asked Oakland how much more additional costs the department is projected to need for the process. 

“We are still going to keep most of our facilities here because we have a data center here as well. So at the very beginning stages of this building, we are going to keep most of our servers here, but we still have to have one or two there which will be about $100,000,” Oakland responded. 

Motion was made to approve the purchases minus the cost of the new metal detector by Arends, seconded by Doug Putnam. 

Chairwoman Tiffani Landeen requested Sheriff Steve Swenson join the meeting via teleconference to discuss the metal detector. Commissioner Arends asked Oakland if there was anything wrong with the current detector. 

“Just that it’s aging and they other part would be the new one has more advance features to tell where the metal is coming from,” Oakland added. 

“I’m pretty sure that thing is close to its end of life, I don’t know that it’s worth moving out to the Justice Center, it’s 20 years old, and that was my understanding with IT that there is no warranty, there is no repair to it, so when it goes down we are done. So it would be my recommendation that we replace it, however if that’s a dealbreaker, we will move on,” Sheriff Swenson said. 

“I definitely believe we should purchase a new one. Any time you’re going to have a new building and you’re going to put a 20 year old piece of equipment in there that doesn’t have any replacement and the bond doesn’t cover it, so we come back and say well we should have did this, but now we have to purchase it out of our fund. That is not a good business decision,” Schmidt added.  

“Originally, this was all baked into the pie on the bond. This has never been a surprise. There have been nearly 200 meetings about this courthouse, any of which the commissioners can be part of, call, ask questions, so this isn’t making any sense to me that we are going to put the security of our new justice center in questions possibly for a period of up to two months without the equipment that we need so this does not make any sense at all,” Chairwoman Landeen said. 

Motion passed unanimously.