City and university officials have signed an agreement formalizing partnerships that aim to pool resources for the benefit of Athens and Ohio University.
“There are a lot of assets in the community that could benefit the university, and vice versa,” said Becky Watts, chief of staff to OU President Roderick McDavis. “We’re going to be exploring what might be possible in those areas for shared resources.”
Both McDavis and Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl signed a Memorandum of Understanding.
“Athens and (OU) have co-mingled lives, resources and activities for over two hundred years,” Wiehl said in a news release. “This memorandum of understanding has provided us the opportunity to take a collective pause and formally establish benchmarks for communication and coordination as we work together for the betterment of the community.”
The agreement includes the charter for a joint council that made up of members from the city of Athens as well as OU. The City-University Joint Police Services Advisory Council has already started meeting and aims to “develop and maintain productive lines of communication between members of the city-university community and the police department (that) serve them,” according to the charter.
The council will: monitor crimes trends and offenses, identify methods of communicating concerns to the community, emphasize crime prevention and safety, provide feedback for community-based policing strategies and recommend programs that improve relations between OU and Athens residents.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about the fests coming up, there’s been a lot of discussion about pedestrian safety,” said OU Police Chief Andrew Powers. “We’re also working on the design contest for the joint patrol car.”
The memorandum of understanding also allows the university to begin making payments on the new city firetruck.
OU agreed to pay $250,000 over a five-year period toward the city’s new firetruck, and is now in the process of making its first annual payment of $56,000.
“The invoice has been received and is going through accounts payable right now, it is in the process of being paid,” Watts said. “The first payment couldn’t be made until we had the memorandum of understanding in place.”
