Boardman acts to fix 911 system

By Denise Dick

Part of the system that sends information to police cars stopped working this week.

BOARDMAN — To avoid a failure of the township’s 911 system, township trustees voted Friday to spend about $78,600 to buy new computer servers.

Parts of the system malfunctioned earlier this week, interrupting communication with police.

Trustee Larry Moliterno emphasized, however, that no 911 calls were missed because of the problems.

For more than a year, township officials knew the township’s 12-year-old servers were nearing the end of their useful life. The servers cover all township operations.

Servers are computers that link other computers and store information — functioning similarly to a library for programs and files.

Late last month, police Chief Jack Nichols presented a resolution to buy the new servers for $78,600 from DRS of Youngstown, the company contracted to handle information-technology issues for the township. Trustees Robyn Gallitto and Kathy Miller wanted Nichols to seek more bids from other companies, and the resolution was tabled.

The money is available and is coming from various township funds, including a police trust fund made of forfeited assets from criminals.

The township contacted two other companies to get bids. One didn’t respond. The other submitted a bid, but it didn’t include the same information, Nichols said.

“It wasn’t an apples-to-apples comparison,” Nichols said.

On Wednesday evening, the lieutenant who oversees the dispatch center received multiple messages notifying him that the servers had failed.

On Thursday, the part of the 911 system that sends information from dispatchers to laptops in police cruisers stopped working. Recordings of calls into the 911 center on Wednesday and Thursday also were lost.

An emergency meeting was called Friday afternoon to pass the resolution to buy the new servers. It passed 2-0 with Moliterno, trustees chairman, and Gallitto in favor. Miller didn’t attend the meeting.

“We just believe these failures were the beginning of the end,” Gallitto said.

Nichols expects the new servers to last for many years.

It will take about six weeks to order and install the new equipment, he said.

denise_dick@vindy.com