Gracedale Nursing Home getting new paging system

Northampton County Council this week agreed to spend about $100,000 to replace a faulty employee paging system at the Gracedale Nursing Home.County Executive Lamont McClure told the board he learned June 3 the existing system had stopped functioning despite efforts to troubleshoot and repair it. He requested an emergency procurement because of safety considerations.Council unanimously agreed Thursday to spend more than $96,000 to buy a new one from Guyette Communication Industries, a Luzerne County company. Among other things, the service will provide a facility wide paging channel, as well as separate paging channels for each nursing unit and for the building’s facilities area.The board split on a separate resolution that supports Gov. Tom Wolf’s call for state lawmakers to impose a severance tax on natural gas drillers partly as a way of raising money for statewide infrastructure and other projects.That vote was 5-3 in favor of the resolution. Council members Robert Werner, John Cusick, Ronald Heckman, William McGee, and Lori Vargo Heffner voted for the resolution. Council members Tara Zrinski, Margaret Ferraro and Matthew Dietz opposed it.“By supporting this, you’re supporting a severance tax [which] I will not be supporting because … [it] makes us more dependent on a fossil fuel that we should be moving away from in the 21st century,” Zrinski said.Wolf was in Westmoreland County Thursday promoting his plan.“What I’m saying is let’s come up with something that’s a funded non-mandate,” he said in Greensburg, according to The Tribune-Review newspaper. “Here’s money to do what you know you need to do in your community.”Gabriela L. Laracca is a freelance writer for The Morning Call.
Source: Morningcall