Roanoke renews Air Evac service for residents
Roanoke City Council swiftly and unanimously agreed to renew its service contract with Air Evac Lifeteam to provide emergency helicopter transportation for all Roanoke residents.
The program allows insured Roanoke residents to be transported via helicopter with no out-of-pocket expenses to the patient for any medical emergency that takes place within the county.
Roanoke has been grandfathered in to the program, which is no longer offered by AirMedCare. If the city had allowed their participation in the program to expire, they would not have been able to get it back.
This will be the seventh year that Roanoke has been covered by the program, which comes at a cost of just over $22,000 per year.
Roanoke residents can also upgrade their service for $45 per household ($35 for seniors) to include transportation from anywhere outside of Roanoke as well.
Rec center AC
The air conditioning in the workout room at Roanoke Recreation Center has been out of service for over two months. The council took action Monday to rectify that.
Roanoke will pay an estimated $5,900 for a new air conditioning system to relieve the sweltering conditions inside the workout room.
The system will be a mini split that will also serve as the heating unit in the winter. The system should be installed within the next month.
Rental contracts updated
The council also approved a change to the city’s rental contracts for the recreation center, the Kids’ Town facility and the former National Guard Armory.
The prices for rental of the facilities were not high enough to cover the costs associated with operating the locations.
The rental fee for Kids’ Town is now $75 per day.
The rental fees for the recreation center and the former National Guard Armory are now $150 per day for nonprofit events and $250 per day for any event other than a nonprofit for each location.
Payscale and personnel policy
Councilmembers Kesa Johnston and Tammi Holley have been working to update the city’s payscale to make pay more uniform across the city’s different departments. They presented their proposal for the payscale at Monday’s council meeting, and the council agreed to review the proposal for a potential vote at the Aug. 16 meeting.
The council hopes to have the payscale finalized prior to approving the city’s budget later this month.
Johnston also presented the council with an edited personnel policy and discussed potential changes to that policy. Those recommended changes include eliminating redundancies and legal wordiness to make the policy more concise and understandable. No official action was taken on the personnel policy.
Washing machine for fire dept.
In other action the council agreed to purchase a washing machine that will allow the city’s firefighters to wash their firefighting gear. The turnout gear accumulates smoke and odors and cannot be washed through a regular machine.
The purchase price of the new washing machine is $4,900.
