THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501270233
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PATRICIA HUANG, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Chesapeake residents can now send messages to the homes of the mayor, the vice mayor, the city manager or City Council members via new facsimile machines which sparked controversy when they were purchased last October.
The fax machines, which cost $1,439 each, were installed last year in the homes of six City Council members and the city manager after the equipment was charged to the council's discretionary budget. At Tuesday's council meeting, the phone numbers of the home faxes were published in the council agenda.
During a retreat last summer, without any public debate or formal vote, the council apparently made the decision to purchase state-of-the-art MITA LDC650 plain paper fax machines, complete with digital laser-printer and photocopier capability.
The machines feature several high-tech functions such as ``quickscan,'' which memorizes each page of a document in four to six seconds to be sent later.
There is also a speed-dial that holds up to 128 numbers and a memory that records up to 15 pages of incoming faxes if the machine runs out of paper.
The total bill for the equipment exceeded $10,000.
Chesapeake was the last city in the region to provide fax machines to council members, but the cost of its machines was up to five times as much as other cities.
Portsmouth spent $300 each for its machines; Norfolk bought four for about the price of one of Chesapeake's; and Suffolk's cost $695 each.
Mayor William E. Ward, Councilman W. Joe Newman and Councilman Alan P. Krasnoff declined to order the machines, saying they already had them at home or at work.
The six councilmen who received the fax machines are John E. Allen, John W. Butt, Robert T. Nance Jr., John M. de Triquet, Arthur L. Dwyer and Peter P. Duda Jr.
Fax numbers of the city manager, mayor and council members:
Mayor William E. Ward - 547-6678
Vice Mayor Arthur L. Dwyer - 545-3806
City Manager James W. Rein - 686-8860
John E. Allen - 479-1790
John W. Butt - 421-0789
John M. de Triquet - 686-8586
Peter P. Duda Jr. - 421-0882
Alan P. Krasnoff - 547-9268
Robert T. Nance Jr. - 482-4995
W. Joe Newman - 482-4423 by CNB