On Tuesday the Scioto County Commissioners and Scioto County Sheriff Marty Donini have come to an agreement, that will result in the purchase of a new 911 system costing $505,720.59.
Recently, Donini was featured in the Daily Times, highlighting the need for a new 911 operating system. Donini pointed out he would have to approach the commissioners Mike Crabtree, Doug Coleman and Bryan Davis about assisting with the purchase.
The commissioners announced Tuesday they appropriated $400,000 from the county’s general fund as their share of the purchase.
Commissioner Chairman Mike Crabtree said Tuesday the purchase was underway.
“There’s going to be new software that’s, new generation,” Crabtree said.
According to information provided by the commissioners the purchase, Maintenance Schedule the total price is $505,720.59.
Donini has agreed to pitch in $152,000.00 on lease payments.
“Our next move would be to contact Frontier to let them know and forward the documents to them because they have to sign off on it too,” Donini said. “We’ll have to put a down payment – I can’t remember how much is in that contract – but we’ll make the down payment and they’ll order the equipment and they’ll put us on a schedule as to when they will actually start this project.”
This new system will replace a technologically outdated system which has reached the end of its software and hardware support. The “Next Gen-911 System” will add additional features which will help dispatchers to respond to calls quicker and in a more precise manner. It is our understanding that Scioto County will be one of just a few Ohio counties to have implemented the “Next Gen-911 System”. The Commissioners support the Sheriff in maintaining a safe emergency response system in Scioto County and look forward to its implementation in the near future.
Donini said the 911 dispatch center will be completely revamped once the equipment is installed.
“We’ll lose all those screens,” Donini said. “Because the touch-screen that comes with this new system will allow us to actually multi-task with one screen. There will be brand new computers. All of our data will no longer be stored in-house. It won’t be stored here. It will stored on Frontier’s site. Actually they have two separate sites. It’s a redundancy back-up that they’ve got. If the system goes down on their end, it will be able to come back up, because they’ve got two separate back-ups.”
Donini also addressed the time frame for the new 911 system.
“They’ll have to get the equipment in place first,” Donini said. “They kind of implied to us it would take anywhere from 30 to 90 days to complete the project.”
