DeSoto 9-1-1 Will Get New Emblem
Henry Bailey Jr. The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Following county government’s adoption last November of an official logo, the DeSoto 911 Emergency Communications District will call up an emblem — the first in the agency’s 25 years of coordinating and supporting dispatch operations.
Approval is expected at the 911 commission’s next meeting on June 26.
“My son Bo did it, and James colored it,” commission chairman Bill Dahl said of a logo sample designed without cost for the seven-member panel.
Bo Dahl is a recent art graduate of the University of Mississippi, and James Powell is the deputy to 911 district executive director Debby Dunnaway. Bill Dahl owns The Shop sign company that employs his son in Southaven.
Bo Dahl also designed the decorative metal sign outside the 911 headquarters at 1040 Starlanding Road north of Nesbit.
The logo employs a prominent “911 District” in white against a black field with the red silhouette of DeSoto County in the middle. Circling all are “DeSoto County Emergency Communications.” However, the colors could change, Powell said.
Eventually, it will be the official letterhead as stationery is replaced, and it will be installed on 911 vehicles and at sites including the headquarters and the four 911 towers at Southaven, Olive Branch, Hernando and near the district office.
“It’s about time,” Dunnaway said of a logo. “We’ve been using everybody else’s all this time.” There are five 911 dispatch centers, four operated by DeSoto cities and one by the Sheriff’s Department.
“And we’ve been around since 1988,” said chairman Dahl.
Action on the logo, a generator committee appointment and approval of $60,075 in monthly maintenance and operational expenses was to have taken place Wednesday, but the panel was unplugged for lack of a quorum.
Dahl and fellow commissioners Jerry McCarson of Walls and Lt. Michael Guice of the Horn Lake Police Department were present, but the other four — Chris Shelton of Southaven, Greg Phillips of Olive Branch, county Emergency Services director Bobby Storey and Hernando Police Chief Mike Riley — were absent. Calls made by Dunnaway and Powell revealed reasons ranging from doctor appointments to electronic trauma. “It’s rare we aren’t able to meet,” Dahl said.
“If an emergency comes up, we can have a special meeting before June 26 and hear the May agenda then.”
Copyright © 2013 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.