There’s a new addition to the Andalusia Police Department, and he has a four legs and a bushy tail.
He’s a German shepherd named Rico.
K-9 Officer Kevin Norris is the owner and partner of K-9 Rico, and has had him since he was six weeks old.
April 12 was Rico’s official first day on the job, but he’s been riding alongside Norris since October.
“I have experience in K-9 and I’ve always liked the idea of having a working K-9,” Norris said. “I love him, he’s my buddy.”
Norris says that there’s a lot that goes into training a K-9.
“Rico had to go through about eight weeks of training to get his certification to become a narcotics dog. I worked with Phil Dodson to train him,” he said.
“We would have Rico search buildings for narcotics in several different areas so that he didn’t become familiar with areas. We spent a lot of time on Fort Rucker conducting searches on compounds there.”
Norris and Rico went through more than 120 hours of narcotic detection training and achieved a certification with the American Working Dog Association.
Rico was only nine months old when he began his training.
“Usually a K-9 will start training at a year old,” Norris said. “We started Rico out young.”
Since Rico is only 13 months old, Norris plans to wait before they train him as a dual-purpose K-9.
“Right now he’s just certified in narcotics. That means he can detect marijuana, crack/cocaine, meth and heroin. Eventually I’d like to train him as a dual-purpose K-9,” he said.
“That means Rico would be trained in apprehension and tracking down people. We’re going to wait until he matures a little.”
Norris said Rico is highly dedicated.
“He never stops and he never has a bad day. He’s dedicated to what he does.”
Norris and Rico have already worked their first drug case together and they’ve been partners for six days.
“He is always on top of things,” Norris said.
Next week, Lt. Alice Donaldson of the Andalusia Police Department will end a 25-year-plus career she began quite by accident.
“I didn’t actually apply for the job,” she said. “I applied for a different position that I know now I couldn’t have done. They called me back in and asked if I would be a police officer. I needed a job with benefits, so I went from there to the Police Academy.”
Now, when she reflects on that sequence of events, she looks up, gives a nod, and says, “It was supposed to be.”
“I love it. I love my job,” she said. “I fought to make it. I am the first black female lieutenant, and I’m about to make it out the door in full retirement.”
When the opportunity with APD opened for Donaldson, she had just finished 11 years in the military.
“I’ve always been hard,” she said. “I was a strong person. But I always believed in being fair. I treat everybody the same, and I tried to stay in my lane. I don’t get caught in stuff going on around
Donaldson said she always took time with people and tried to treat them with respect.
She now supervises two shifts.
“My guys, we are tight,” she said. “I’ve been doing it so long, I think they look at me as a mom. I treat them all the same, and we have rules we follow. They’ve got my back and I’ve got theirs. They are my other family.”
She has high praise for Chief Paul Hudson.
“This chief has been really good to me,” she said. “He opened the door for me to be able to get my lieutenant stripes. I’m really grateful for that.”
As she worked for APD, Donaldson also served in the National Guard for 22 years, retiring in 2012. She was only activated once, when she went to Iraq for a year in 2010.
As a female officer, she said, you have to work twice as hard.
Asked what advice she’d give someone beginning a career in law enforcement, she said, “Be fair. Always be fair. Show respect to the person, and he will give you respect back.
“When I showed up at a scene, people came straight to me. They knew I never lied to them or tried to trick them to get information,” she said. “Now sometimes, I had to lock them up, but they knew that.
“Now, I see people I’ve locked up and they say, ‘Thank you, Mrs. Alice,’ ” she said. “Some of them know if they were on drugs, getting locked up saved them.”
The opioid epidemic is real, she said, and it’s real right here in Andalusia.
“We see a lot of it because we’re the first responders,” she said. “People who are high on it are just out of control, seeing stuff, and fighting at things that aren’t there. If you think it doesn’t happen in Andalusia, oh yes it does.”
Donaldson’s husband, James Donaldson, is retiring this week, and the two plan to travel.
“We’re going everywhere,” she said, adding they’ll start by visiting family.
“We’ll stay as long as we want to, because we’re not on anybody’s schedule.”
She also loves to cook, and enjoys feeding friends and family. Donaldson has one son, Durrell Rawls, Jr.
“I just give glory to God for this journey,” she said.
She will be honored with a reception at the Shaw Recreation Center from 2 until 3:30 p.m. on Fri., April 27.
The Andalusia City Council on Tuesday had the first reading of a proposed ordinance to raise the pay of elected officials.
Alabama law does not allow a council or commission to raise its own pay, but it can set the pay for a successive administration. Mayor Earl Johnson said the pay of city elected officials was last adjusted in 2006 for the administration that was elected and sworn in in 2008.
“If this is enacted, it will not take effect until the next administration takes office in 2020,” he said. “If you pass it, it won’t take effect during this four-year quadrennium.”
The proposed ordinance sets the biweekly salary of the mayor at $2,596.15, or $67,500 per year.
Council members would be paid $375 per biweekly pay period, or $9,750 per year. The pay for council members would be increased by $225 per month for completing the basic certified municipal official classes, and an additional $225 per month for completing the advanced certification classes.
Elected officials also can participate in the city’s life and health insurance plans, but must pay their own premiums.
If the resolution is approved, the total pay for elected officials would be approximately $144,000, representing only 2 percent of the annual salaries paid by the city.
City has helped fund Bright Beginnings, which is closing
Andalusia Mayor Earl Johnson on Tuesday asked city council members to give consideration to whether or not they want to try help preserve a pre-school program previously run by the Andalusia Housing Authority.
Housing authority board members recently voted to close Bright Beginnings, the Pre-K program originally designed to serve children who live in public housing. The program also accepted children who did not live in public housing and whose parents paid a minimum tuition. Board members cited lack of federal funding, as well as very low participation from its residents, as reasons for closing the program.
“Unless something is done, we will not have a Bright Beginnings program this coming year,” Johnson said. “We’ve been putting $75,000 a year into it, and the budget last year was upward of $120,000. I would like to get y’all’s feedback on what you think we should do.”
Johnson said some of the students served by the program did not live in the city limits, and suggested seeking financial support from the county.
“This (pre-school) is not our responsibility,” he said. “It’s the Housing Authority’s deal. Our only involvement is to appoint members to their board, and help them out from time to time on issues that come up out there.
“If we can keep going and serving students, Housing Authority or not, and we can get some help to raise money, I’m all for continuing to do what we have been doing,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the program started in about 2000, and the city has donated $75,000 each year.
“If you multiply $75,000 by 18 years, that’s a lot of funding,” he said of the approximately $1.3 million the city has contributed. “I need your feedback on whether you’re willing to keep putting $75,000 in.”
He pointed out that there are more pre-K programs in the school systems now, and there also are for-profit pre-K programs.
“Be thinking about it,” he said. “I don’t have an answer for it. I hate to see it dissolve, but we can’t pick up every program that loses its funding. We have other responsibilities and things that needed to be done.”
Superintendent Ted Watson said Bright Beginnings has “one of the nicest facilities around,” and that if there is a question of what to do with the facility, he is interested in the school system using it.
To date, The Andalusia City School system has spent $1.6 million on its estimated $12 million projects at Andalusia High School, and board members are facing decisions that could add to the costs.
For instance, last night, the board had to decide whether to spend approximately $23,000 to add brick to the new pressbox. But that was small potatoes compared to other decisions that lie ahead.
The general contractor for the project, Wyatt Sasser Construction, needs to know before they begin installing artificial turf on May 2 what kind of scoreboard will be installed, Superintendent Ted Watson told the board Monday.
“On May 2, they’re going to start on the football field, and it will take about 30 days,” he said. “They need to know where to have holes for the scoreboard.
A scoreboard isn’t approved in the base bid negotiated with the construction company.
“We saved the old scoreboard,” Watson said. “I’ve been told Coca-Cola will provide a new board in exchange for an exclusive for their products being sold in the stadium.”
There has been much talk about a video board being installed in the new facility.
“I’m told with board Coca-Cola would donate is an analog scoreboard on the bottom, but it could be retrofitted to hold a video board,” Watson said.
It is estimated the video board would cost $60,000. But Watson said he and others have looked at a video board installed in Enterprise that cost $110,000 when it was installed.
“If you said, ‘We want it much bigger,’ then we need to plan accordingly.”
Another possible decision: What to do with the awning over what was once seating and soon will be a plaza. The contract price approved includes power washing the awning and repainting it.
“One of the cheapest things we could do would be to cut it down,” Watson said. “It would cost approximately $20,000 to sandblast it and repaint it.”
A third option, to replace it, could cost as much as $84,000.
The board also is looking at another added potential added expense – a wrought iron fence between the stadium and auditorium, estimated at an additional $105,000. The current plan is for a chain link fence.
The board did not make a decision on any of the additions, but may call a special meeting before May 2 to finalize scoreboard plans.
In other business, the board was told a new software program that will be used for online lunchroom payments next year has the capability of collecting other school fees and selling tickets online.
The system’s bus fleet passed inspection.