Plan for enhanced 911 sent to PUCO for OK

Answering points are being created for emergency calls.
By D.A. WILKINSON
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
LISBON -- Columbiana County's plan for enhanced 911 emergency telephone service has been sent to the Ohio Public Utilities Commission for final approval.
Gary Williams, the county commissioner overseeing the project, said the service should begin sometime between April and June next year.
When installed, the system will show emergency dispatchers the location of calls from regular or cellular phones.
Williams expects the plan will be approved.
The commissioners approved the plan Wednesday. Williams and members of the county's technical advisory committee voted Tuesday to take many of the last steps needed to complete the project. Those moves were also approved by the mayors of East Liverpool and Salem before the plan went to the commissioners.
Police, fire and ambulance calls will be routed to five law enforcement agencies: Salem, Columbiana, East Palestine, and East Liverpool police and the county sheriff's office.
New centers
Robert Emmons, the county's 911 director, said that the remodeling to create new dispatching centers at East Liverpool and the sheriff's office were complete. Work is under way in East Palestine, and Columbiana is awaiting equipment. Work is supposed to start in Salem in December.
The committee had earlier approved the work, but discovered it had to approve $40,000 more to make each site bulletproof to protect the dispatchers and to make them accessible to members of the public with disabilities.
The committee also approved an additional $86,000 to make the radio equipment in the five sites compatible. Each site has one dispatching station. Part of the money will be used to create a second dispatching station at each center.
Emmons said that a concern about the committee's decision to buy the main equipment for the system for $963,000 was no longer an issue.
The committee earlier agreed to buy the equipment from CML Emergency Services that was offered by Verizon. SBC, which handles local phone service, offered products from Plant Equipment Inc. SBC representatives raised technical questions about linking its equipment to the CML equipment.
Emmons said Golden Gate Capital, which owns Plant, just bought CML. The company announced that CML and Plant have complementary technologies that represent two-thirds of the public safety market in the United States.
The technical advisory committee will meet in January to decide whether it will buy the equipment outright or through a lease agreement.
wilkinson@vindy.com