(Clarinda) – Page County officials have approved a contract to expand the county’s shipping operations.
The Page County Board of Supervisors met in a regular session Tuesday and approved an agreement with Zetron and the state of Iowa for joint 911 services. Kris Grebert, the county emergency management coordinator, says the agreement will allow the county to add a number of programs to its 911 dispatch center and that it will cost less than what the county is currently spending.
“This will add services to the county by giving us emergency medical dispatch, pre-911 response mapping, and CAD mapping to all of the officers’ mobile vehicles with the computers, which we don’t currently have.” said Grebert. “It will be a cost saving for us. It will save a little for the first three years, but after that it will be a big cost saving for the 911 Shared Service Board.”
Perhaps the largest component of the shared system is the addition of an emergency medical dispatch program for Page County. According to Grebert, EMD enables dispatchers to issue instructions in medical emergencies before first responders arrive on site.
“If someone has a heart attack, we can help start CPR,” Grebert said. “Montgomery County just gave birth to a baby through those EMD services they recently had up there. The dispatcher can help take care of the caller before anyone arrives.”
The new system will save the county approximately $ 25,000 annually from the E-911 budget after the initial cost of upgrading compatible hardware and software systems. After the implementation payments for the first three years, the county will see the savings for the services. Grebert hopes to use some of the money he saves from the deal to upgrade the radio dispatch consoles, which are gradually aging.
“We are currently using the AVTECs that we bought in 2015,” Grebert said. “We did not update these when we were developing the radio system because they were still new enough. We want to update these in the next three to five years. It will be a high price. We.” We’re looking at – if we do now – $ 300,000 for the three consoles, or $ 100,000 each. But in the next two or three years it will surely increase as well. “
Grebert hopes Zetron officials will be able to install the first software within the next 60 days and that the county can delay the first payment until July 1, when the next fiscal year begins.
Thank you for reading kmaland.comAt KMA we try to be precise in our reporting. If you see a typo or mistake in a story, please contact us by email at [email protected]. |
Comments are closed.