Chief Steve Finical of the Summit County
Sheriff's Office had already selected the winning
bid for a new conveyor system at the County Jail
when he got a call from Tammy Kinder, senior account
manager of Jeter Systems Corporation in Akron.
"I read in the Akron Beacon that you're about to
spend almost $81,000 on a replacement conveyor
system to store prisoners' personal property," she
told the chief. "If I can show you a better solution
with more storage capacity at about half the price,
will you give us a crack at it?"
Although some public servants would have declined to
start the arduous bidding process all over again,
Chief Finical welcomed the chance to save taxpayers'
money. "Even though this project had been in the
works since 2002, I figured it wouldn't hurt to give
Tammy a shot," he said. "We try our best to be
prudent with county and taxpayers money."
Finical immediately put Deputy John Barrackman and
County Jail Maintenance Supervisor Tom Hathaway on
the job with Jeter Systems, a leading manufacturer
of mobile storage systems, filing cabinets and
color-coded filing supplies. The two county
officials worked closely with Kinder and her team to
custom-design a movable shelving system that fit
their exact specifications at a price tag that was
$40,000 less than the system they were considering.
“We were originally looking at a conveyor system
similar to what you’d find at a dry cleaner’s,”
explained Hathaway. “Dry cleaning-type systems are
designed to handle single items of clothing. In our
case, we have inmates who bring their entire
belongings with them if they happen to be homeless.
The systems we were looking at just weren’t designed
to accommodate that kind of volume and maximize our
space--an important consideration since we regularly
house more than 600 prisoners at a time.”
The engineers at Jeter showed Barrackman and
Hathaway several prototypes of its EZ Roller movable
storage system before they arrived at a design that
was acceptable to both the County Jail and the
Company. "With constant input from the |
|
|
|
staff at the County Jail,
we were able to design a system using off-the-shelf
parts that gave them far more storage capacity for
considerably less money."
The system designed by Jeter features a
stationery row of storage racks, plus seven movable
rows that are used to create access aisles when and
where they are needed, thus making the most of
available floor space.
Deputy John Barrackman left and Chief Steve
Finical right inspect installation of prisoner's
garment bag.
Each row functions as a stand-alone two-tier
"closet" to hold bags containing prisoners' personal
property.
"Our old conveyor system was installed in 1989 when
the jail was built," Finical said. "It wasn't
industrial strength, and we were constantly
repairing it. The Jeter System is mechanical instead
of electrical, so there aren't a lot of things that
can go wrong with it. It's so heavy duty that it
looks like we'll never need to repair it.” |
