Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Tuesday night, The Selma City Council met at the City Hall Chambers for their regular scheduled meeting to discuss the city’s business.

During his report, City Attorney Major E. Madison Jr. came to the chamber’s podium alongside Police Chief Kenta Fulford to announce a partnership with Cardiac Solutions that would cater to a faster medical response throughout the community. The proposal would allow the city to purchase emergency automated external defibrillators (AED).

“Mr. (Jon M.) Seale and I have been working on this proposal for two and a half years now, trying to get AEDs, not just in all our patrol vehicles, but the city buildings as well, because you never know when someone might have a medical emergency or go into cardiac arrest. These AEDs are life saving devices and I think that they are very important,” said Fulford.

Fulford told the council that if the department could get the AED devices, he would make sure that all city employees who use the devices are trained, know where the AEDs devices are and know how to effectively use the device in case of an emergency.

“We gave you a letter from the Sheriff’s Department, where they reached out to the agency’s office to see if the opioid funds could be used, and I do have a copy of that from the chief legal counsel examining the public accounts, confirming that those funds can be used for the AEDs purchase,” Fulford said.

Council President Warren Billy Young told the council just after hearing Chief Fulford’s proposal that the idea is considered “a first impression to them” and that he understands that the council may have questions about the proposal but recommends since they have a resolution and a contract in front of them that they should hold further action until it’s discussed in their upcoming work session meeting.

Seale, CEO of Cardiac Solutions, spoke before the council after their verbal decision about his involvement with the AEDs and how the devices can not only help the officers on duty in Selma but the city as a whole.

“We obviously know how detrimental a single cardiac arrest can be,” said Seale. “480,000 people die every year. Every seven seconds, someone goes into a single cardiac arrest. We’ve been working on this, as the chief said, over two and a half years, and the placement of the AEDs would be in cars, police stations, parks and recreation centers in Selma, the Selma-Dallas County library, the George Evans Convention Center, the Vaughan- Smitherman building, The Selma Performing Arts Center, The Selma City Hall and the city’s public works building. What we want to do is we want to try and create that three-minute rule. Every minute it takes you to get to someone unresponsive, you decrease your chance to save a life by 10 percent. So ideally, we want to be able to place these defibrillators in optimal locations, especially in the vehicles.”

Seale said his program is nothing without proper education.

“So, every single year, we are going to come in and train all the employees, the police department, and what I really like about our program is on year four, the chief is not going to walk up and ask for a requisition for batteries and pads, we are going to replace those free of charge. So, after the contract is done using the opioid funds, you are done for eight years. In essence, it’s a turn key program if that’s what you’re looking for. That’s what we are looking for and we are hoping to do that,” Seale said.

Seale told the council when they discussed the idea within their upcoming work session, not to label them as vendor but as a partner that they can lean on to help do other things to make the city of Selma great.

“Tonight, it’s very simple. We want to make it a safer city and a safe Alabama, that’s our goal and our purpose,” Seale said.

Like President Young said earlier within the meeting, the potential partnership between the City of Selma, the Selma Police Department and the Cardiac Solutions organization based out of Birmingham is a proposal that the council asked questions about for clarity but decided earlier on within the meeting not to vote on until after the proposal is brought up again during their upcoming work session.

The next council work session is scheduled for Thursday, April 17.