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Commissioners direct creation of capital fund for 911 microwave and repeater upgrades
Summary
Board agreed to create a capital improvement account to fund multi-year microwave/backhaul upgrades for 911 repeaters; plan calls for initial seed funding from unspent year-end balances and staged engineering work.
Bonner County commissioners directed staff to create a capital improvement fund and begin saving for a multi-year project to add microwave backhaul and strengthen repeater sites that support 911 radio communications.
Sheriff27s office and communications staff described a plan requiring site equipment (repeaters) and microwave backhaul links. Staff estimated the per-site cost for microwave backhaul and repeater equipment at several hundred thousand dollars once engineering, FCC filings and cross-border coordination (where applicable) are included.
"When Ziply has a problem and they cannot provide service there, that repeater site goes down," a public-safety staff member said, describing the need for a communications redundancy not reliant solely on commercial fiber. Commissioners agreed they could not complete all engineering and purchases in the current fiscal window but that creating a capital reserve this year would allow phased work. One commissioner proposed seeding the fund with between $300,000 and $500,000 from unspent appropriations at year-end and using the first project to address the Hoodoo site.
Why it matters: The county27s 911 repeaters and dispatch connectivity are critical infrastructure. Replacing reliance on single commercial circuits with microwave backhaul reduces the risk that a single provider outage will take down radio coverage over broad areas.
Discussion vs. decision: Commissioners authorized creation of a capital improvement fund and directed staff to identify unspent balances to seed the fund. They asked communications staff to produce a multi-year project plan and prioritized initial engineering for the Hoodoo/microwave link. No site construction contracts were awarded during the meeting.
Ending note: Staff will return a formal capital-improvement plan and an updated cost schedule; the board suggested tracking the fund by fiscal year and reassessing at the end of 2026.
