Sheriff's office pitches county app to centralize alerts, jail info; board to consider next week

Aaron Riddle, chief deputy of the sheriff's office, demonstrated a county-branded app called MySheriff and asked the board to consider adopting the service.

Riddle said the app would let residents receive push notifications about road closures and severe weather, search jail and warrant information, submit tips, and link directly to opioid-treatment resources. "It's a resource that's available, through a company called MySheriff app, and we can put much of our resources available to the public so they can make contact with the sheriff's office," he said. He told the board the vendor would maintain the software and that local staff would provide content updates.

The deputy outlined pricing: "It's just under $12,000 for the first year, and then every year after that, it's about $7,000," plus a one-time roughly $500 fee to integrate the app with the county's records management system. He said there is a discounted option if the county prepays three years.

Board members asked how tips would be handled, who would update content, and what would happen if opioid grant funding used to pay the app ended. Riddle said tips would come through the vendor portal and be reviewed locally and that the vendor would handle most technical maintenance; if the board saw value, the county could consider adding the cost to the regular budget. "If we're seeing value out of it, that'd be something that we would maybe try to work in our budget," he said.

The board did not vote on the proposal at this meeting. Members agreed to put the MySheriff app on next week's agenda for a formal decision.