911 Board Hears About Consoles, Radio Reception

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Published on December 8 2015 2:28 pm
Last Updated on December 8 2015 2:28 pm
Written by Greg Sapp

The Effingham County 911 Board Tuesday heard that telecommunicators are using the consoles recently installed at the city and county dispatching points.

System Administrator Jodi Moomaw said the units are working well, but noted there've been problems with the recording equipment on the server. Moomaw said the vendor will replace the server to allow the full range of services promised with the system.

Moomaw also reported that legislation signed into law by Governor Rauner Monday freeing up funds for various entities includes money for 911 systems. She reminded board members that no more funding would be coming directly to the 911 systems as of January 1, but would be administered by the State. The change approved a year ago institutes the same 87-cent surcharge to all state residents. The belief of state officials is that everyone being assessed at 87 cents will generate enough revenue that those who've paid higher surcharges can pay less due to the volume of users. A survey of the state found that many residents in more populated areas were paying less than the 87-cent rate, while Effingham County residents have been paying $2.75/month.

Meanwhile, some of the fire officials who are a part of the 911 board shared again that the new consoles haven't solved problems they have with occasionally lousy reception. The new consoles weren't ever expected to solve reception problems, but the gathering is a venue for fire officials to share their frustrations over reception problems that have gone on for years. Representatives of the Dieterich, Shumway and Altamont departments all shared that narrow banding is a problem, that is, crowding more and more transmissions onto a smaller amount of bandwidth, leading to interference problems.

The 911 board decided in recent years that their focus was on dispatching the information and that transmission and reception problems were the concern of the individual public service agencies.

Board members Tuesday also approved an agreement for audit services with West and Company.