STOW — Town Administrator Denise Dembkoski and Acting Chief of Police Michael Sallese are pleased to announce that the Town of Stow and the Stow Police Department were both awarded grant funding from the state earlier this week.
The Town of Stow was awarded $40,000 through the Massachusetts Community Compact Cabinet (CCC) Information Technology grant program. The program provides grant funding for local municipalities to help promote innovation and transformation via investments in technology.
This funding will be used to build the online permitting and licensing equipment for various town departments, including the Building Department, Fire Department, Board of Health and the Town Clerk’s Office. Work will begin in the coming weeks, and the goal will be to have the systems running within the next six months.
“This will not only be a great tool for the town to facilitate permits and licenses, but for citizens, real estate agents, contractors or any other community member to conduct their business in an accessible, user-friendly way any time, day or night,” Town Administrator Denise Dembkoski, who applied for the grant for the town, said. “We are honored to have been chosen for this competitive program and for the support from the state to help provide our community with the best services possible.”
The Stow Police Department received a $20,577 grant from the Edward J. Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program, which will be used to purchase three police cruiser computers with mounting brackets, as well as a radar unit to respond to speeding complaints. The computers will replace the current equipment that is several years old.
The grant was part of $7.8 million in funding that the Baker-Polito Administration allocated Monday to provide access to equipment and strengthen training, crime prevention and enforcement initiatives across the Commonwealth.
The JAG program provided $4.6 million to fund needs such as protective equipment and communications infrastructure. The funds are allocated to local agencies by the allocated by the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security’s Office of Grants and Research (OGR).
The Stow Police Department is among more than 160 law enforcement agencies across the Commonwealth that were awarded grant funding.
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