911 map service switched
By DAVID M. GRIMESLISBON - The county commissioners threw in their support for the new mapping service that will be released with the new E-911 emergency initiative in September.
At the county commissioners meeting Wednesday morning, Dan Bing, Penny Traina and Jim Hoppel unanimously passed the motion to approve the purchase of the new NAVTEQ mapping service that will bring more accurate and reliable results to the emergency services. Bing also serves on the advisory committee.
The mapping service was discussed on Tuesday afternoon during the Columbiana County 911 Technical Advisory Committee meeting. Robert Emmons, 911 director, said the results, from the testing phases, were unacceptable and opted to go with NAVTEQ, who supplies services to companies like Yahoo, Google, MapQuest, Garmin and TomTom. The NAVTEQ maps will cost $7,875 for an annual subscription. Along with the mapping software, the county will receive quarterly updates to the maps as well. The committee is awaiting a quote from Verizon to import the new data into the mapping system.
Emmons said, at the advisory committee meeting, the company has also shown its support in providing fixes to found errors throughout the subscription agreement. Even though Emmons said he preferred to fixing the errors in-county, this solution was the next best thing.
The 911 director recently had trouble contacting the original mapping company who used the Tiger mapping system. Emmons reported, at the advisory meeting, that it took three weeks of calls to fix a problem that ultimately took 15 minutes to fix.
The poor customer service coupled with the unreliable results reported from various emergency departments gave need to go with a different company, said Emmons.
Also at the commissioners meeting, a motion was unanimously passed to approve the Dynamic Instruments Voice Recorders maintenance agreement at all five public service answering points (PSAP). The agreement is set to start on Aug. 1 and run through July of 2009.
The maintenance costs vary from $2,200 to $2,400 at the different answering points. The total cost of the annual maintenance is $11,400.
