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Cleveland County to pilot 'Community Connect' portal to give first responders property and medical details
Summary
Emergency management staff described a plan to roll out an opt-in portal called Community Connect that lets residents and businesses provide property, pet, mobility and other details to first responders; staff said rollout and data-retention policies are still being developed.
Cleveland County emergency-management staff outlined plans to launch Community Connect, an opt-in portal that lets residents and businesses provide property- and health-related details to help first responders prepare before arriving on-scene.
Perry Davis, the county’s emergency management director, introduced a presentation and said the system is intended to supply responders with information they otherwise would not have until they arrive. "I'm going to bring up Josh Queen. Josh is going to do the presentation on this," Davis said.
Presenter Josh Queen told commissioners, "We're now working with a portal system called Community Connect." He said the portal will integrate with the county's record-keeping and FirstDue dispatch systems so that when a 911 call is dispatched to an address, responders can see voluntary information entered by the resident—pets in the house, mobility limitations, presence of gates or pools and other situational details. Queen said the portal is not a replacement for 911 and that residents choose what to enter: "There's nothing required on that. They could just put their name and address, but all that information are just what they put in there to give to them."
Queen said staff plan a public campaign around the start of the year to encourage sign-ups, and that outreach will target residents with special needs and civic groups. Commissioners asked whether the state will feed data directly into the portal and whether data retention would leave sensitive details on responders' devices. Queen said the system will be tied to FirstDue and that departments can tier access so that sensitive fields (such as gate codes) are visible only to designated personnel; policies on how long data remain on devices are still under development.
A commissioner raised privacy concerns and suggested some residents may object; staff said the network will be secured and controlled and compared access protections to medical data handling. The presentation materials and a QR-code sign-up handout were distributed to the board.
Next steps: staff will continue developing access and retention policies, finalize integration with FirstDue, and begin public outreach about sign-ups.
