Trending
LISBON -- Already ahead of other counties, Columbiana County is being asked to share financial figures about the current 911 system in the county.
The Public-Safety Answering Point (PSAP) operations subcommittee met this week and is scheduled to report some actual figures by the end of February, as it looks at what are the actual costs to the bring other counties onboard with Next-Generation 911 systems.
Those figures will then be reporting to an ESInet committee, which would like to see all the counties in the state offering Next-Gen 911, including the fiber optic lines needed to provide better services. The plan is that once the state provides the ESInet lines throughout the state, all the counties will have five years to make Next-Gen 911 available to the residents, either by going through the state's ESInet lines or by doing it on their own, which could be much more expensive.
County EMA Director Peggy Clark notes Columbiana County was part of a pilot program with other counties and has shared many of those figures already. The county spent about $850,000 on upgrading their system in 2017, replacing all the equipment and software to connect the county's five 911 PSAP's to a smaller version of the ESInet shared between a few counties.
The concerns she and Deputy Director Brian Rutledge have include how this 911 system and the maintenance of it will be funded down the road. Already that five-year-old equipment installed in Columbiana County is showing signs of needing upgraded or replaced.
With the state collecting 25 cents per phone bill right now, Columbiana County receives $210,000 per year. Yet a recent study by Mission Critical Partners, shows in order to consolidate all the five PSAP's together, something they believe will be part of the process in the future, it will cost $2.3 million.
Clark, Rutledge and County Commissioner Tim Weigle have been part of an effort speaking at the Transportation and Public Safety Committee meeting of the Ohio House to try to convince the state to collect more than 25 cents per phone bill. Ohio collects one of the lowest amounts of any states in the country.
During a recent meeting of the PSAP operations sub-committee, several people shared the concerns of Columbiana County local officials, talking about how the costs of the equipment and connectivity is only part of it, while personnel salaries, training and other operating costs are a bigger piece that are not being included in some of the figures being considered by House Bill 445.
Of the more $2.05 million in total operating expenses estimated in a recent study by Mission Critical Partners, $1.99 million is personnel costs, including salaries, benefits, training and overtime. However, those total expenses do not include the facilities that house the 911 call centers, which are currently located within police departments and share the costs with them.
Clark said they will continue to provide any information those at the state level request and hope to see the state take a long look at how much operating these 911 systems actually will cost the counties.
"We've said all along, we want to be successful at this," Clark said. "This is a good thing. This technology and having the best trained telecommunicators with the greatest technology, we want that, but at the end of the day it all comes down to how do we pay for it."