Cleburne County 911 director warns upgrade costs rising as state grant remains on hold

At a joint meeting of Cleburne County’s Prepaid Emergency Communications District, the district director (Speaker 5) reported that the center processed "approximately 26,000 calls" through Nov. 30 and said staff had applied for an Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) to cover equipment upgrades.

The director told commissioners and district board members the vendor that services the shared hosted call-taking system recommended a return to a standalone system because of connectivity issues affecting Cleburne. She said the vendor recommended the change after several other districts were placed on a shared host and that the vendor has raised concerns about the county’s connectivity.

"We applied for the grant," the director said. "We were notified in November ... that the cost-recovery funds the state board pulls the grants from were on hold" after a state examiner expressed concerns about how the state board handled those funds. The director said ACCA and the state board were working with the state examiner to change the grant-language so the funds could be used by districts.

Board members asked whether the upgrade was primarily equipment or software; the director said the district has the equipment but "we don’t have a software here" and that the standalone solution would require additional work. She said a vendor representative indicated the standalone conversion could cost in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars, described in the meeting as "200 something odd,000." The district historically paid a hosted-maintenance fee of about $10,800 per year.

Commissioners and staff also discussed interim connectivity options. The director said the district has recently installed Starlink "as a backup to our Internet" and noted a private vendor had proposed a shared gig service at about $1,500 per month for some county facilities; staff said they preferred a stand-alone configuration to avoid shared firewalls and potential single points of failure.

On vendor performance and contract remedies, one participant (Speaker 9) urged a review of the contract language to determine whether the vendor’s original proposal matched contract terms and whether there was a basis for a claim. The director said discussions with the vendor and the state board had been "pretty heated".

The Emergency Communications District meeting concluded with a motion to adjourn that passed by voice vote. District staff said they would continue pursuing the EMPG application and seek guidance from ACCA and state board contacts about cost-recovery fund eligibility.

The county commission meeting that followed took up separate agenda items.