Emergency management director reports pending FEMA reimbursements, installs five Tempest weather stations

Emergency Management Director said at a county meeting that the county has not yet received reimbursement for fiscal-year-2024 claims submitted to the state and that FEMA has approved a 2025–26 preparedness grant the office expects to submit in September. The director said FEMA approval appears on track despite federal funding questions and that the grant amount is about $24,000 to $25,000. He said the county recently received five Tempest weather stations and plans to place them at the highway department south on Lamb Road, Pearl City Fire Station, Lena Fire Station, Rock City Fire Station and German Valley Fire Station, and offered to provide a station to villages that request one. The director described other budget items for the office: an emergency management fund of about $22,400 for the last year; upgrades to MiFi devices used for streaming and emergency Internet access and an increase in telephone-related costs after those upgrades; and purchase and licensing costs tied to Starcom radios. He said the software package for the Tempest weather system is an additional line-item cost and that Starcom eligibility costs roughly cover radios and annual fees. Board members asked how tower rental works and who owns the tower. The director said the county’s VHF repeater is on a tower in Elroy owned by a company called JC WiFi and that the county pays about $900 per year to keep the repeater active on that tower. The director also listed personnel and device phones paid by his office: phones for county leadership standby use, animal control, highway personnel, a nursing home phone and, this year, additional phones for the IT manager and highway supervisors to improve county communications. He described plans to consider multiband radios that combine VHF and Starcom capabilities and to assist the highway department with specialized weather stations and a tower project. The director said he expects to discuss reimbursements and regional preparedness at a regional meeting Thursday in Kiwanee and invited board members to contact his office with questions.