Chapter 170

I worked at KCC for the rest of the week. Patti, HR and I worked on hiring the several more full time people to meet the needs of the athletics department. They were going to be working a 4 to midnight shift to be able to go to sporting events as guards and chaperones.

Patti going on vacation the last week of each of the next three months would complicate things a little. Admin was going to assign me one of the pool secretaries when she was gone.

Another complication was Mr. Jackson had sent me the list of colleges that wanted security audits completed for their campuses. They needed to be done ASAP in order to make the necessary changes before the fall startup.

I had already called Johnson Tri County of Salem, North Carolina. In fact, I had talked with them twice. Mark, my administrator, Robert Bradberry from East Coast security and I were flying down to look at the college's security needs on Tuesday. Cindy was printing off a complete low level color map of the campus from Google Earth. I would use the map to lay out the camera system.

Butler Tawes was the Chairman of the board of directors for Johnson Tri County. He and Dean Skaggs were old close friends, I gathered from my conversations with him.

I asked if he knew the cost that FSU were going to pay for the new security they were going to get?

"Yes, David and I discussed at length what they were getting and the cost, he even let me read over the contract. I talked with him yesterday. He spoke very highly of the people you had on site a week early because of the problems. He said that you had a system in place that you could demonstrate for my people when you come to talk to us," he said.

Mr. Jackson had said there were only a few, there were 8. I was going to be spending a lot of time away from home this month. I decided that any of them that I could drive to in four hours or less I would drive to; the others I would fly to. I printed out the attachment and also sent it to my JBG email account. Yes, I also had one of those now. Email was now getting to be a big time consumer.

I could just imagine the stream of phone calls, faxes, letters and time it must have taken before email to do anything. Now, simply click attach to everyone involved and wait until they all responded.

Gainesville Regional Advanced Education Community College in Gainesville FL, 2000 student's, co-ed Dorm's. A fast growing college in an area growing with new manufacturing jobs as a result of the exodus from the heavy unionized north, high taxes and over regulation.

Larger companies had to find a way to cut cost in order to keep their manufacturing in the USA or send it overseas. Many had decided to move south and states were fighting each other offering incentives to companies willing to make the move. The Gainesville area offered a good skilled labor pool with the reduction in the space and support program under the current Washington administration and offered excellent infrastructure.

Greensboro Community and State College in Greensboro, N.C. There were 1500 students in dorms and 1000 commuting. Greensboro was the third largest city in North Carolina.

Like Gainesville it had been hit hard with the government cutbacks, this time military ones in the advanced aeronautics. A forward looking community administration with an advanced growth plan saw the problem coming. They began courting companies two years before other areas even acknowledged there may be a problem. They had captured several major northern companies looking to make a move and had a highly skilled technical workforce readily available.

Warrington County Community College located in Warrington N.C. They had 850 students in dorms and 500 commuting. Warrington was one of the colleges that had a shooter on campus this year. Six students were injured, none serious - the shooter took his own life. He was a previous student there that had been expelled for problems. The lawsuits coming their way were already horrendous for the failures of their security.

Prattville Community College of Alabama. Prattville was an advanced education faculty in engineering and electronics. They had 500 students in dorms another 250 commuting. Prattville had been in the news lately over a hazing incident and sexual misconduct between students and faculty. The entire College Board had been replaced last year along with a dozen professors. I remembered the Prattville group; I had met with them separately on the first day about security issues.

Tennessee Community College of Lewisburg was next on the list. They had 500 students that were in dorms and 200 commuting. They had problems of a different kind. Two students had been killed in a fight that had started in a bar with non-students who followed them back to the campus. The college was being sued for a huge amount of money over the lack of security. There had been issues for several years that had been covered up.