Test Stations for New County 911 System Online

After years of delays, Franklin County has a fully operational test version of its new computer-aided dispatching system up and running.

Interim 911 Director Vince Zagarri told county commissioners this week that county personnel and vendors have five test workstations set up in the old juvenile detention center.

Once county dispatchers have been trained to use the new software system, it will be integrated into like operations, Zagarri said.

The system was supposed to be operational next month, but the date has been pushed back.

Zagarri said previously that the scope of the upgrades has changed since the county originally purchased the over-$1 million system.

Members of the county’s emergency management communications board, which includes fire and ambulance chiefs who use the county’s dispatching center to handle 911 calls, have expressed frustrations with the more than three-year delay in getting the system online.

“Everything is going very well,” Zagarri told commissioners. “We’ve got all the right people in the same room.”

While certainly the most expensive part of the county’s 911 upgrades, the new CAD system isn’t the only part.

Zagarri said the county completed an initiative to switch to narrower radio frequency bands earlier this year.

That cost the county less than $50,000, and met a federal deadline more than six months in advance.

Zagarri called the switch, which modified the county’s existing radio network, a frugal move.

The county also has fully implemented “Phase 2 cellular placing,” Zagarri said.

That technology allows 911 calls from cellphones to be pinpointed to within a few feet.