Mayor dumps electronic locks
Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Some Tontitown city officials are not too happy about being locked out of the decision to change the door locks to the Tontitown City Hall from electronic cards to manual key locks. Especially since the electronic system was only two years old and cost the city $ 5, 500.
Tontitown Mayor Joe Edgmon said he did away with the electronic card locks on the city hall and recorder / treasurer doors on July 11 because they were finicky and did not work. The change cost the city more than $ 400.
Several other city officials and an alderman said Edgmon did away with the locks because he never took the time to learn the software that runs the electronic locks.
An e-mail sent by Debbie Corter, Tontitown recorder / treasurer, stated the electronic locks worked fine until mid-May, when Edgmon removed the city’s Water and Sewer Commission from city hall. She said Edgmon, who had the lock software on his computer, hired C & E Locks and Safe in Springdale to come in and reprogram the system and deactivate the codes of the Water and Sewer Commissioners and their employees. Corter said the change came at a price tag of more than $ 500, and marked the beginning of the lock’s problems.
She also wrote that, during the course of six months prior to the Water and Sewer eviction, Edgmon paid C & E Locks and Safe a sum of $ 660 to reprogram individual cards. She said the company stated it doesn’t normally do such work because usually the owner takes care of such instances.
“ Then he paid to disconnect the entire system, ” Corter said.
Corter said she is concerned about Edgmon’s decision because she was left in the dark about who had keys to her office and the city records held there. She said she’s accountable if something happens to those records.
Edgmon said he made the decision because the cards have not worked for employees and officials on several occasions, and he was sick of having to reset the system every time one of the locks stopped working.
Alderman Becky Alston said the people she has talked to, including a city secretary, said the system was really quite simple and that they’d never had any problems with it.
“ My concerns are that he just went in and changed a whole system that had no real problems, ” Alston said. “ It’s something that (Edgmon ) could easily (work ) if he just took the time to learn it. ”
Edgmon said he was thinking primarily about security, and he brought in C & E Locks and Safe to reprogram the system so past employees who still had live access cards could not break into city hall. He then decided he felt more comfortable replacing the electronic locks with manual locks and handing out “ nonduplicatable ” keys to public officials and officers.
Alston and Corter said they wish he would have brought the idea up to the City Council instead of making the decision without any discussion.
City Attorney Mark Dossett said the cost of changing the locks was well within the mayor’s spending power and did not require City Council approval or a bidding process.
Corter said the issue will be discussed at 7 p. m. at the Aug. 5 council meeting. There is an ordinance on the agenda addressing who should have access to the recorder / treasurer’s office.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
