The renewal of a temporary pay adjustment for county employees was approved by the Washington County Board of Supervisors for an additional 30 days at their regular Monday meeting.
The temporary pay adjustments began in May and were revisited every 30 days since then by the BOS as an effort to compensate employees who were and are deemed “essential” amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
District 2 Supervisor Mala Brooks motioned for the renewal and District 1 Supervisor Lee Gordon seconded the motion.
The motion won by an unanimous vote and the temporary pay adjustments will be revisited again in another 30 days.
In addition to his report to the BOS, Emergency management director Robert Burford discussed the benefits of geocoding as an update to the county’s 911 map, which was developed by Delta State University’s Geospatial Information Technologies (GIS) department.
The Mississippi Automated Rescue Information System (MARIS) defines geocoding as the process of finding associated geographic coordinates (often expressed as latitude and longitude) from other geographic data, such as street addresses, or zip codes.
Burford pointed out since the map’s development in 2005, there have been construction projects to emerge and somewhat impede the map’s accuracy, requiring the map to be updated.
“A lot more information has come along in the GIS since 2007 and we can get a lot more information to help public safety folks respond better,” Burford explained.
He highlighted when the county’s 911 map was initially done, there was no standard for the addresses; if they were looked up on any mapping software, the address does not show the actual location of where they are.
“Geocoding corrects that,” Burford said. “It provides an exact location and that data, over time, is picked up by all the map vendors; a year or two down the road when people go and put in their addresses, it will show up.”
District 2 Supervisor Tommy Benson asked Burford if the update would solve some of the issues with smaller municipalities whose streets and addresses have been “off” in emergency situations.
Burford said it would, however, it is a year long process.
The total cost for the map update is $45,396.88, which would be expended using the E911 budget.
The BOS voted to postpone a decision on the geocoding update until the next regular meeting for further discussion.
