Calvert County accepts Maryland 9-1-1 board grant to buy DATAMARK GIS services for emergency response

The Calvert County Board of County Commissioners on June 3 approved a grant award from the Maryland 9-1-1 Board to purchase a five-year subscription to DATAMARK’s geographic information system (GIS) services for the county’s emergency communications division.

Public Safety Director Dave McDowell and Emergency Communications Division Chief Stanley Harris briefed the board in a public hearing. Harris said the award covers a five-year subscription and implementation work and totals $171,696.71; the grant requires no county match. The department requested adoption of a resolution and a budget amendment to record the intergovernmental revenue and capital expenditure in the fiscal 2025 budget.

Harris described two primary services DATAMARK will provide: contracted staff hours to perform GIS tasks and a hosted validation service that compares the county’s GIS data to national Next Generation 9-1-1 data standards, flags errors, and simplifies corrections. Harris said those services will reduce manual workload, improve data accuracy, and help ensure 9-1-1 callers’ addresses are located properly when routing first responders.

The board recorded no public comments during the hearing. A motion to close the hearing record and adopt the resolution and budget amendment (BA2025-0000420, as stated in the presentation) was moved, seconded and carried by voice vote; the transcript does not record a roll-call tally.

McDowell told commissioners the communications division was not fully staffed at the time of the hearing; the division reported six vacancies and said interviews were underway. Commissioners and staff discussed recruiting but did not adopt additional personnel actions at the meeting.

The grant award and budget amendment were approved by the board in open session. No additional conditions or amendments to the grant were recorded in the meeting minutes provided in the transcript.