Select Board adopts updated emergency plan; emergency director seeks funds to repair siren and update communications

The Jamaica Select Board voted to approve the town's updated Local Emergency Management Plan (LEMP) after a presentation by Greg Leggis, who introduced himself as the town's emergency management director. Leggis told the board the latest plan mostly updates names and contact points but adds actions to respond to lessons from a recent exercise and improves public-information posting sites.

Leggis proposed expanding communications channels that would work during a total communications outage, including coordination with a regional AM radio group and designating a liaison (Zach Call) to maintain those links. He also reported the fire-department siren has been broken for more than a year and proposed repairing and repurposing it as a civil-defense warning, offering his $500 emergency-management budget as an initial contribution and promising to return with repair estimates.

The board discussed the siren's history; a former chief and other speakers said the siren was traditionally used to summon volunteers and test weekly. Leggis said he had already reached out for diagnostic work and would return with estimated costs. "One of the big takeaways...they had no emergency siren," Leggis said referring to a recent flood incident elsewhere, pushing the case for a functional civil-defense alert system.

The board approved the LEMP by voice vote and asked Leggis to come back with cost estimates and recommended next steps for repairing the siren and expanding emergency shelters and equipment (e.g., replacement cots and pet-shelter plans).