Douglas County staff brief commissioners on emergency communications, IT needs ahead of move to public safety building

Douglas County budget staff told the County Commission on July 9 that Emergency Communications (ECC) and Emergency Management are requesting mainly personnel-related increases, plus one-time spending tied to vendor contracts and World Cup planning.

The overview said Emergency Management “has 1.5 FTE funded by the EMPG grant” and that its budget is substantially unchanged from the prior year except for personnel increases. Emergency Communications’ 2026 request includes overtime for two additional call taker shifts and $169,000 for “additional Motorola contract expenses,” the presenter said.

County staff emphasized that overtime for two call-takers is budgeted as overtime for existing staff rather than new hires. “These aren't new call takers. So this would be additional overtime dollars that would be allocated to existing staff to serve in that function during World Cup,” the presenter said.

Commissioners pressed staff on how ECC’s IT support relates to the sheriff’s office IT. ECC staff said their operations use a mix of the sheriff’s network support and vendor/contracted IT and radio technicians maintained separately. “We kind of use a mix of both our own IT that we do between administration with the ECC and then the sheriff's office IT,” ECC staff said. They added the county hopes to move more administration-side IT work to the sheriff’s IT in the future but noted the sheriff’s office currently lacks capacity.

Commissioners also asked about the timeline for moving ECC into the Public Safety Building. County staff said the move remains uncertain; they reported receiving a May/June timeframe from the construction manager but said an exact date will depend on whether the county becomes a World Cup base camp and on continuity-of-operations priorities.

Staff outlined complexity for the relocation: ECC uses multiple, overlapping networks (the sheriff’s network plus three contractual vendor networks) and several vendors including Motorola, AT&T (for 911 service) and Aviat (microwave). ECC staff said the startup and cutover work will be substantial: “Startup and transition is gonna be significant on the IT side. We have a very, very complex network,” they said.

Commissioners asked whether adding IT positions requested elsewhere in the budget would duplicate services. County budget staff noted that the sheriff is an independently elected office with its own IT responsibilities and that some specialist capabilities — for example, radio programming and radio technicians — logically sit with ECC rather than a centralized IT team. “I do not believe it's a duplication of service. I think it's about trying to balance centralized services with a decentralized specialist that's working closer to the people it serves,” the presenter said.

The ECC overview also noted operational agreements with nearby cities: an agreement updated in February 2024 allocates ECC costs among Douglas County and the cities of Lawrence, Baldwin City and Eudora based on a formula that transitions Baldwin City and Eudora to their full population-based shares in 2026.

Commissioners asked for clearer, regular updates on technical back‑bone projects and cybersecurity, and ECC staff said they would provide more regular briefings. ECC staff warned that cybersecurity needs have grown quickly: “Three years ago we didn't talk a whole lot about cybersecurity. Three years now, I have four different cybersecurity packages on four different networks,” ECC staff said.

Ending: Commissioners did not make decisions at the hearing; budget staff said they would return with any timeline updates for the move to the Public Safety Building and will include ECC staffing and contract details when preparing final budget materials.