County Office of Emergency Services is buying a new emergency response trailer after getting rid of travel trailers intended to help the homeless during the COVID pandemic.
According to a report from OES’ Scott Milner, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services gave the County 14 travel trailers in April 2020.
The travel trailers were “to be used in response to the emergency, specifically to address homeless needs in the community during the proclaimed emergency,” Milner said. “The State transferred the trailer titles to the County.”
County Supervisors didn’t formally accept the trailers until last June and then declared some of them to be “surplus.”
“Five of the trailers,” Milner said, “were donated to non-profits, three are being utilized by Public Works, one is being utilized by the Sheriff’s Office, and one is being utilized by OES for the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES). The remainder of the trailers [four] were sold at public auction.”
Supervisors had also approved OES using the money from the sale of the trailers to buy itself a trailer that would be specifically built with features and gear OES needs to respond to emergencies, a so-called “field response trailer.”
OES and the County Purchasing Department worked together to order the trailer and Milner had to return to Supervisors to adjust the budgets to first reflect the money from the sales and then to properly allocate money to the buying of the new response trailer.
The new emergency trailer is costing some $48,000, which Milner said is enough to purchase it outright. He didn’t say if that expends all of the money from the travel trailer auction sales, but any leftover money would remain in the County OES’ reserve fund.
