The Carroll County Commissioners and Carroll County Volunteer Emergency Services Association (CCVESA) broke ground Tuesday on a new public safety training center. As reported in the Carroll County Times:
When the $4.7 million improvement project is completed in a year, the new facility will have classrooms, large meeting rooms and technology that will help law enforcement, emergency responders and volunteer firefighters get the training they need to serve the people of Carroll County and perform their duties safely, [CCVESA President Dennis] Brothers said.
“Training has been proven to make our jobs safer. Training has been proven to decrease injuries in our real-life fire service and law enforcement type incidents. But most importantly, training decreases the possibility of line-of-duty deaths,” Brothers said. “It all begins right here, right now.”
The project, slated to be completed in a year, did not come about without difficulties. It took nearly 8 years, but with help from the Carroll County Commissioners the new facilities will be built on the site of the old, aging facilities.
The commissioners suggested that a new facility be built at the current site, something CCVESA officials had not considered. Eventually, a new facility was designed and the commissioners approved money for the improvement project.
Commissioner Robin Bartlett Frazier, R-District 1, commented on how Tuesday’s chilly weather was appropriate to the project finally getting started.
“I think it’s appropriate that it’s freezing out here because I think, to some, it seems that this building wasn’t going to move forward until hell froze over,” Frazier said, then laughed.
Frazier praised the efforts of staff and CCVESA personnel for working hard to keep the cost of the project down and for finding ways to save the county money. It wasn’t easy, she said, to make sure that the project stayed within budget.
Read the full article in the Carroll County Times.