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Advisory committee votes to seek Active 911 funding for rostered members
Summary
The Oconee County Fire Service Advisory Committee unanimously voted to ask that Active 911 be returned to the county budget for rostered members with current physicals, while allowing station chiefs discretion to manage membership; estimated cost discussed was about $6,000.
The Oconee County Fire Service Advisory Committee voted to ask county leaders to restore the Active 911 alerting system to the county budget and to limit enrollment to rostered members with current physicals, with station chiefs able to add or remove members as needed.
Committee members said the county-funded system would allow all stations to send countywide pages rather than limiting pages to individual station subscriptions. "If money allows and we get Active 911 back, we have everybody that's on a current roster that has a current physical gets on Active 911, and that station chief has access to add and subtract membership as needed," a committee member said when moving the motion.
Why it matters: Committee members said the county subscription would reduce duplication and let chiefs make roster-based decisions about access. County staff estimated the system cost as "like 6,000 some odd dollars" for the Active 911 subscription in the current budgeting discussion. Several members emphasized keeping roster lists current and said chiefs should control access, while noting that stations that purchase standalone subscriptions would be limited to station-only paging.
Members debated eligibility and technical limits: speakers clarified that if a station purchases its own Active 911 subscription it can only page that station, while a county subscription can send an all-page. Members also discussed how to limit enrollment to active roster members with current physicals and whether certain nontraditional responders (for example, clergy who occasionally respond) should be exempted from the physical requirement; the committee left discretion to station chiefs to handle edge cases.
The motion to pursue funding and include Active 911 as a budget line item carried on a roll-call vote recorded as unanimous; the committee forwarded the recommendation for inclusion in county budget discussions.
What's next: The advisory committee will include the Active 911 request in recommended budget items for county council consideration and asked station chiefs to supply roster updates to inform cost and eligibility calculations.
