Upgrades Approved For County Radio System

Members of Meade County Fiscal Court authorized the beginning of upgrades to improve the county radio system for emergency services.

County leaders have been exploring the needs of the county and city agencies who use the radio system everyday to respond to the needs of the community for police, fire and EMS. After just over a year of work, officials believe the proposal is the best improvement that seen increased use over the past decade.

During the regular meeting of Meade County Fiscal Court on Tuesday (3/14), magistrates voted approving a upgrade to a simulcast radio system which is expected to resolve about 95 percent of the current issues that emergency services have in communicating to the E911 Center in Brandenburg.

The current radio system uses several channels to transmit to remote sites in Garrett and Payneville that repeat the information to another channel to gain distance to units across the county. The new system will simulcast or transmit the information to all of the remote sites at the same time like a normal base station instead of transferring the main signal between channels. In addition to the new approach a new repeater will be added to the main site at the E911 Center to assist transmissions to cover the city of Brandenburg more effectively with out having to use the remote sites to east or west side several miles of the city.

Judge Executive Gerry Lynn said the cost of the system would be $397,939 for the total project. Part of the expense will be the cost of the new repeater at the courthouse, in addition to $55,000 to replace the fire paging control system which activates the county fire departments when they have a call. Judge Executive Lynn said that he is working to see if the fires departments who are funded by taxing districts and the City of Brandenburg would help cover some of the expense as a reimbursement to the county since their departments utilize a majority of the communications of the radio system.

The cost of the project will be partially paid from the current fiscal year budget with the remainder of the funds to come from the upcoming fiscal year budget. The action Tuesday night by Meade County Fiscal Court will allow Owens Communications to begin work on the project.