Orland Park approves Cook County Everbridge mass-notification memorandum of agreement

The Village Board on Dec. 15 approved a memorandum of agreement with Cook County to use Everbridge as the village's mass-notification system at no cost. Trustee Waller moved to approve the MOA and to authorize the village manager to execute related contracts subject to village attorney review; the motion was seconded and approved by roll call.

Trustees raised questions about why the service was not discussed earlier and compared Everbridge with the village's existing Code Red subscription. Village staff said Cook County purchased Everbridge licenses and is offering them to municipalities at no charge; staff noted Everbridge is widely used and that Code Red experienced a breach that affected other jurisdictions, not Orland Park. Trustees discussed consolidating internal alert tools (such as InformaCast) and using Everbridge both for public mass notification and internal emergency- management call-outs ("two silos").

Board members asked staff to examine redundancy across systems and noted that adopting Everbridge should improve resilience and response times for emergency activation and public alerts. The MOA was approved by roll call.