Huron County needs more than $4M for 911 upgrades

NORWALK — Huron County officials say they need at least $4 million to upgrade the county's outdated 911 and communications system, which has had nine outages in the past 18 months.Earlier this year, the county put a new five-year, 0.725 mill levy on the November ballot to pay for upgrades. The levy would cost about $25 each year, or slightly more than $2 per month for a home valued at $100,000 — bringing in about $862,100 each year.Tacy Bond, 911 coordinator for the county's emergency management agency, said some county residents were puzzled that the county was asking for a total of about $4.3 million over five years.The emergency management agency released a breakdown of anticipated costs for the upgrades. Between initial costs and annual operating costs, the county estimates it needs close to $4.1 million. How will levy funds be spentThe majority would be used to install new equipment and software. Bond said about $3.6 million of the levy funds will be used for projects including:• Three new communications towers.• Three new generators for the new towers.• Twelve new repeaters, which receive and transmit radio signals.• Three new microwave links, which "bounce" radio signals back and forth over longer distances.• Upgraded radios and mobile computers for law enforcement.• New monitors and workstations for dispatchers."Many of the the things we're trying to fix are 20-30 years old," she said.Even its computer software will be out of date on Jan. 1, 2020. "Microsoft is not supporting anything prior to Windows 10," Bond said. "We have to upgrade all of our computers to Windows 10."Once the initial installations are done, which would likely be in years 1 through 3, the remaining levy money would be used to pay for operating costs, Bond said. It will also be used for any additional upgrades or equipment that might be needed as technology changes.The levy will not pay for any wages or personnel costs, she said.Why it's neededBond said the county's 911 system had nine outages in the last 18 months. When the system goes down, dispatchers can't use GPS systems to pinpoint a caller's location."You just get the voice," she said during a presentation Tuesday for the Norwalk city council.A proposed solution to this is creating a "redundant" 911 system with a neighboring county. What that means is if something causes the county's 911 system to fail, 911 calls made in Huron County would get picked up by a neighboring county's 911 center.Bond said the state's 911 funding, done through a 25-cent monthly charge on cell phone bills, isn't enough to fund county 911 operations, and that it wouldn't allow that money to be used for some of the projects they want to complete, like radio upgrades. Huron County gets about $128,000 each year from the 911 cell phone tax."If (the state) would raise the tax to $2.50, it would bring in $1.2 million per year," Bond said. "Then we wouldn't need a levy, per se."Bond said her agency also intends to pursue a grant from the state's commerce department and the Ohio 911 Program Office for Next Gen 911 funding. There's going to $4.3 million in funding available, done through reimbursement grants of 60 percent of the cost of an eligible project.But Bond noted the funding might not be approved for all the projects the county intends to pursue, as the state has not yet released any guidelines. "There are eighty-eight counties who can apply for it, as we are all underfunded on some level. At the end of the day, we might not get much of anything at all," she said. "If we are awarded any monies, we must pay for the entire project up front and then be reimbursed for 60 percent on the back end. We do not have any additional funds in the budget to cover the upfront costs if our project is approved."Huron County's 911 system handed 14,491 calls last year, according to data from the Huron county commissioners.Editor's note: Norwalk Reflector reporter Cary Ashby contributed reporting.Reach reporter Brandon Addeo at brandonaddeo@sanduskyregister.com, follow him on Twitter @BrandonAddeo and follow the Register at Facebook.com/SanduskyRegister