Commissioners accept bid to institute major upgrade in communication system
Times photo/Jessi Dreckman The Ozark County Commissioners are pictured here, from left, Western District Commissioner Layne Nance, Eastern District Commissioner Gary Collins (seated) and Presiding Commissioner Terry Newton. The commissioners’ office, located in the upper level of the Ozark County Courthouse, is open from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Mondays and from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. The office is closed from noon to 12:30 p.m. for lunch. Friday appointments can be made by calling the office at 417-679-4096.
During Monday’s meeting, the Ozark County Commissioners accepted a $265,910.30 bid from Radio Communications Specialists (RCS) of Springfield for a big upgrade to the communication systems of the Ozark County Sheriff’s office and all of Ozark County’s volunteer fire departments.
The commissioners have been working with Ozark County Emergency Management Director and Ozark County Sheriff’s Department employee Curtis Ledbetter on the project. Ledbetter tells us that radio communication from the Ozark County Sheriff’s Department dispatch office, officers and to and from local volunteer firefighters is poor.
How big of a problem is it?
“It’s massive. Recently we were going into a house, and our [officers] in the back of the house couldn’t even talk to the [officers] in the front of the house on the radios,” Ledbetter said. “And Tecumseh [VFD] – they can’t even receive pages...”
That means that when a house fire breaks out and the dispatcher calls the local volunteer fire department to respond, many times the firefighters don’t even receive the call on the radio. It also means that when a deputy is responding to a dangerous situation and needs back up, there’s a possibility that they are without radio communication or cell phone reception.
“We’re planning on this for now...and we can try to start working with the SCOCOG [to apply for a grant] yearly to upgrade a few every year,” Newton said.
The project components recommended by Ledbetter are organized into three different sections: the Ozark County Sheriff’s Department needs, the local volunteer fire departments needs and upgrading the repeaters to make all the radios connect and communicate better.
The sheriff’s department package includes eight handheld mobile radios, portables, repeaters and installation for the sheriff’s department. “That will cover our six deputies, our sheriff and our transport van,” Ledbetter said. The cost for that portion was $117,513.96.
The second part of the project covers the local VFDs and amounts to $66,609.64. It includes 72 portable radios that will be dispersed to local volunteer firefighters. Ledbetter says the proposal also includes 12 in-car radios with repeaters that will be distributed to the VFDs to be installed in a main fire vehicle to use when it gets on scene.
“Curtis is emergency management director, and we felt like if [the county was] going to update the fire department radios, we need to be able to inventory those, know where they’re at... and control those. And we can do that with Curtis heading it up,” Newton said.
The third part of the project to add more repeaters to the network
“We currently only have one current repeater in the north, and this will add two extra,” Newton said. “We have one in Bakersfield that we don’t use, and we’re were going to sacrifice it, move it to the west and connect all of them together. So, it would make four repeaters and one base station at the sheriff’s office. This will connect the whole entire network, everything together, and it will all be on one channel.”
Lebetter said one of the most expensive components of the project is the networking of all the radios and repeaters to one channel. “So, they can just turn it on, and it doesn’t matter where they are in the county.” County road crew employees will also eventually be able to use the channel to connect with deputies and VFDs.