(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors this (Tues.) morning heard an update on the installation of the county’s new 911 radio system. Dickinson County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Ehret says to date, they’ve spent some $2.5 million on the $6.1 million dollar project. He says they’re roughly half-way complete with it…
“Discussion started last year in September and it was approved in December, last December. In that time we completed site surveys, the tower studies, we’ve got our microwave paths determined. The user radios have been ordered and a lot of those have already arrived. Infrastructure equipment which is what is going to go on the towers and the equipment that runs the sites and so forth, some of that has started to arrive. Expecting tower work to begin probably in the spring once things warm up a bit. Expect our local sites to be online in the late spring, next spring.”
Ehret says they’ll wait until after Labor Day next year to switch over to the new system…
“We don’t want to give our responders a new radio system right at the beginning of summer when it’s our busy season, it won’t end well. So we’re going to hold off until fall to switch over to the new system, which is fine. It gives us the summer like I say to do a lot of testing and to make sure things are working like they should. Expecting full cut over, implementation, sometime in September, October timeframe, so about 10 to 11 months from now.”
In addition to law enforcement, the new system will also serve all of the fire departments in the county, ambulance crews and first responders and schools.
Ehret says the schools will be installing the new equipment over the upcoming summer. He says the county’s secondary roads department is already using the new radios.
