DALTON, Mass. — The Police Department is in need of tasers, Police Chief Deanna Strout told the Select Board on Monday night. 

 

 

The department currently has one broken and three functional tasers -- not enough for all its officers. This urgent need escalated several weeks ago after an altercation on Main Street during which officers were in a physical struggle. 

 

The chief said she did not have a taser to back her officers up, which is unacceptable. 

 

"We needed to give our officers every less lethal option available to them. It puts us in a really terrible liability situation if we don't," she said. 

 

The department asked supplier Axon Enterprise for discount if payment was upfront and was quoted a reduced price of $1,000 per taser that is good until Feb. 28. 

 

Strout intends on purchasing 14 tasers so that all full-time officers will be assigned one and be able to take it home at the end of the day to store in their home safe. They will also have enough to keep at the station for the reserve officers and for swapping out if one breaks.

 

"[Reserve officers] will not get one assigned to them but the full-timers will because when they work football games, the carnival especially, they need these options," Strout said. 

 

Although they are under a five-year warranty this is not a five-year contract, Strout clarified. If they have an issue within the five years, they will be replaced. 

 

"If we purchase upfront we will have them within four to six weeks. My goal is to have us up, running, and trained because this is a new model because the ones we have, they no longer service because they're just outdated," the chief said.

 

Town Manager Thomas Hutcheson asked if in five years they could gradually buy the tasers so it is not one lump sum every five years. 

 

This is not an option because it's going to be a new model by then, Strout said. "They get outdated and the technology gets old. So you have to buy the brand new model that's out."

 

The town received $1,950,367 in ARPA funding. Thus far it has spent $3,600 on COVID-19 tests, $9,400 for road engineering, $12,700 for a trailer and $71,400 for an excavator for the Highway Department, $53,816 for a police repeater, $119,500 for a fire truck, and $145,000 for Water District engineering. 

 

The town has committed $540,188 for paving, $86,000 for Dalton Division Road sewer engineering, and $31,257 for 500,600 grants. 

 

The town estimates that it will use $380,000 for sewer repairs, $4,000 for fiber ring network overage, $22,000 for the Public Works' heat pumps.

 

After these investments, the town will still have $471,506 left that will need to be used by October 2024.

 

The board and Finance Committee bounced around a few project options to consider including investing in the transfer station, a composting initiative, or engineering for geotechnical projects. 

 

The town currently rents the transfer station's trash and paper compacters. The equipment is rapidly aging and on occasion it has been difficult fix.

 

"With that company shall remain nameless at this point. But at any rate, utilizing a portion of it to replace at least one of those pieces of equipment might be advantageous for us," Finance Chair William Drosehn said. 

 

The town can maintain its recycling program but Hutcheson would also like to see a compost program which would take out the majority of the weight it gets billed for.

 

Finance and Green Committee member Thomas Irwin agreed with this statement and also noted that in 2019, the town created a municipal vulnerability plan and received several suggested projects that may be worth reviewing. 

 

The board voted to create a subcommittee made up of various committee members to recommend the best way to use the remaining ARPA funding. 

 

Board members John Boyle and Robert Bishop and Irwin are agreed to be part of the committee.