It’ll cost around a grand but Town of Chesterton first-responders will soon be able to activate local tornado sirens independently of the Porter County Emergency Management Agency (PCEMA) and 911 Dispatch Center.

At its meeting Monday night, the Town Council voted 4-0 to release CEDIT funds for the retrofit of a pair of two-way radios, at a cost which Police Chief George Nelson estimated at $540 to $600 per unit. Once retrofitted, the radios will have the capacity, when the right code is entered, to sound the town’s tornado sirens.

Member Dave Cincoski, R-3rd, was not in attendance.

How exactly the radios will be deployed is not certain yet, but Nelson suggested—for instance—placing one permanently in the CPD radio room and providing another to the Chesterton Fire Department.

President Emerson DeLaney, R-5th, did want to know whether the town’s having independent activation capacity could expose it to liability. Nelson noted in response that the two radios would supplement, not replace, the PCEMA and 911 Dispatch Center, both of which will still be able to sound the town’s tornado sirens when conditions or warnings warrant doing so.

Member Jim Ton, R-1st, later thanked his colleagues for agreeing to fund the retrofit. At the council’s last meeting Ton broached the issue of independent activation capacity in response to the failure of the 911 Dispatch Center to sound the sirens on Aug. 19 despite urgent requests from the CFD. An investigation subsequently determined that a 23-year-old control panel had malfunctioned.

In other business, members voted 4-0 to instruct Building Commissioner Dave Novak to proceed with the condemnation of the fire-damaged house at 1500 Maximilian Drive in the Rose Hill Estates subdivision, after owner Sofianos Hasapis failed to comply with a demolition order issued by the council on Aug. 10. That order gave Hasapis 10 days to demolish his house.

Hasapis’ house was essentially destroyed on Jan. 30 in a fire which the Chesterton Fire Department determined to be of incendiary origin. Police said that Hasapis was in Illinois at the time of the fire.

Novak has found the house to be in violation of the Unsafe Building Ordinance: namely, that it is uninhabitable, poses a danger to persons and neighboring properties, is a fire hazard, is structurally unsound, and is a nuisance.

Meanwhile, members voted 4-0 to take under advisement the petition of Lorri Wells for the vacation of a portion of unimproved Park Ave. between 18th and 19th streets. Wells wants to build a sunroom addition to her home in the 700 block of South 18th Street but has only 15’ 6’’ of setback available while the Zoning Ordinance requires a setback of 25 feet from a platted roadway.

Member Jeff Trout, R-2nd—formerly a long-serving member of the Board of Zoning Appeals—suggested to Wells that she might be better served by seeking a simple variance from the BZA. A vacation would not only require her immediate neighbors to join the petition—since they would receive half of the vacated right-of-way adjacent to their properties—but would also mean that both she and her neighbors would begin paying property taxes on their newly acquired strip of ground.

A variance “would probably be the cleanest and best way” to resolve the issue, Trout said. Wells indicated that she would speak to Novak about filing a petition with the BZA.

At the request of Clerk-Treasurer Gayle Polakowski, members voted 4-0 to instruct Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann to draft an ordinance establishing a Town Gift Fund for the purpose of maintaining citizens’ donations to the municipality.

Members also voted 4-0 to take under advisement a pair of proposals received for the design and re-modeling of the former United Tractor facility at 106 N. 15th Street.

Those proposals were submitted by Berglund Construction of Chesterton and Chester Inc. of Valparaiso.

Lukmann said that it was not immediately clear, from a cursory glance at the documents, whether the two firms had submitted apples-to-apples proposals.

Posted 9/29/2009