34 years later Mayor Stidger joked he is retiring as that temporary employee. It appears that the temporary position was soon made official as Rankin moved through the ranks beginning as a public works maintenance man and working his way to Water Reclamation Plant Operator 3. Rankin was in charge of conducting water sampling and tests as well as preparing reports for the Regional Water Quality Control Board. Rankin thanked his family and then Council Member Al Nunes for hiring him so many years ago.  Under Administrative reports Jackson Fire Chief Mark Morton gave a report to the council on the Jackson Fire Department’s activities for the month of March. “It was the busiest month to date that I can remember since 1994,” said Morton. The department received 95 calls at an average of 3.1 calls per day keeping local volunteers on their toes.

Chief of Police Scott Morrison then reported that the Jackson Police Department had the same kind of month. He said while calls usually top in the upper 200’s this month they received 331 calls for service. He said they were “busy across the board” as Officers also worked on 117 police case reports. The department had a total of 89 arrests with warrant arrests topping out the departments arrest log at 20. Traffic related arrests followed with 16 arrests and juvenile offender arrests not far behind with 14. In March there were 10 narcotics arrests, 6 theft arrests, 5 arrested for being drunk in public, battery and parolee arrests tied with 4, while there were 3 domestic violence arrests, and finally one sex offense arrest.

In regards to traffic the Jackson Police Department gave 311 warnings and issued 101 traffic citations. He also reported, “We had, kind of, a surge of weird things happen last week.” Morrison reported that 12 drug offenders came to register at the office. He reported that the registrants are people that are moving to the city of Jackson and are required to register as drug offenders. He also reported that they had 2 sexual offenders from outside of the area register as well at the police department.