Jump into the 21st century
By ROBERT LINNEHAN
The Cherry Hill Sun
11/21/2009

The township’s Department of Public Works is taking a jump into the 21st century, as the township approved the purchase of 70 new push-to-talk phones with GPS capabilities. The new phones will allow the department to enter into a new age of interoperability, said the mayor’s Chief of Staff Dan Keashen.

It immediately increases the level of communication between the public works department, the school and fire districts, neighboring municipalities, and Camden County.

The 70 units will be tied into a contract offered by the state. The contracts being offered to Cherry Hill will last for a year, until Oct. 31, 2010. The units will run on the Nextel Communications network, which representatives said will improve efficiency and make inter-local service agreements easier to facilitate with improved communication. Mayor Bernie Platt said the new units would be able to improve the communication at the public works level.

“We are increasingly finding ways to enter shared-service agreements with other public entities in order to save money, and in some cases, generate revenue,” Platt said.

“Shifting away from the present radio system our DPW communicates through, and moving into the instant, push-button connection offered through the Nextel Network means services can be conducted more efficiently, emergencies can be mitigated more quickly, and our shared services will be all easier to coordinate.”

Each unit will cost $42 a month, which comes to a total of $2,940 for all 70 units. According to Keashen, the township’s DPW currently has service agreements with the school district – which consist of trash, recycling, and leaf removal – and sharing fuel services with the fire district and Merchantville.

According to Platt and other officials, the units will allow the township to see where its DPW vehicles and crews are operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “For Cherry Hill, push-to-talk communication is a natural fit,” he said.

In other township news:

Council President Steve Polansky congratulated the four winning candidates of the recent general election and thanked township residents for participating in the process. n New council members Susan Shin-Angulo, Jim Bannar, and Jacquelene Silver will take their seats on council in January. Current Councilman David Fleisher was the only incumbent to run and he also retained his seat.

All four winning candidates are in the Democratic Party.

Both Shin-Angulo and Silver were in the crowd and thanked Polansky for his kind words.

The three new members will take the seats of Steve Polansky, Councilman Frank Falcone, and Councilwoman Joyce Kurzweil, who chose not to seek re-election.