Iowa County weighs radio options

MARENGO — Iowa County Supervisors must decide how to fund updates to its emergency management equipment and what equipment it needs to buy to keep the emergency network running smoothly.

Josh Humphrey, Emergency Management coordinator, told Supervisors last week that the county’s radio contract is up next October and the county needs to renew it.

The last time the county updated the system, it took 18 months to get the new radios, said Humphrey. The county has about 100 radios for law enforcement, he said.

Fire radios have been at their end of life since 2022, said Humphrey.

Emergency Management asked Raycom about extending it a year or two, but Raycom wasn’t interested, he said.

The parts they have available to repair the radios now are scavenged. The manufacturer quit making parts in 2022.

“The school stuff is all still fine,” said Humphrey.

Humphrey plans to purchase radios compatible with the accessories emergency agencies already have while cutting things they don’t need.

“We cut some of the options on the radios,” Humphrey said.

The current radios are multiband, Iowa County Sheriff Rob Rotter said, but EMA doesn’t need that any more.

Supervisors wondered if departments could pay for their own equipment.

The last time the county suggested that, some departments said they’d go without radios because they couldn’t afford them, Humphrey said. That’s why the county agreed to fund the radios countywide.

“They don’t buy the initial radios,” said Humphrey, but they buy the batteries, pagers and other accessories.

The county can try to assess the cost to the individual towns, said Humphrey, but it would take a lot of pancake breakfasts to pay the bill.

Humphrey is chief at Millersburg Fire Department. It’s budget is only $17,000, he said.

To save expenses, the department has only 10 radios because firefighters can share them. “I don’t need 30 of them, if I only us 10 of them.”

Every firefighter has to have gear, said Humphrey, and that’s $3,000 each. Everyone doesn’t have to have radios.

Some fire departments have 30 radios and are paying maintenance on them, Humphrey said. They don’t need them all. The county could cut back there.

Law enforcement radios cost $3,600 each the last time the county bought radios, said Humphrey. Radios for fire departments were $1,000, but the cheapest he can find now are about $1,800.

In-vehicle radios cost about $2,800, said Humphrey. EMA will have to replace all of those too.

“We do get a trade-in value for all these old radios,” said Humphrey. Last time it was $450 per radio.

The radios are the cheapest part of all the components in the network, said Rotter.

The most expensive part of the upgrade are the consoles and computers, which will cost about $1 million, said Humphrey.

“If this would fall apart, you wouldn’t have mutual aid,” said Josh. During the C6-Zero fire in 2022, six fire departments responded and had no problems communicating, he said.

Raycom offered to backload the contract, said Humphrey. The county could bond for the system, about $7.5 million with the maintenance contract, pay interest the first five years and pay off the principal in the final five years of the contract.

Supervisors asked Humphrey to get some final cost estimates and present the numbers at a future meeting.