First responders will need to wait a little longer for new radios as the Newton County Board of Supervisors works to find funding for the 120 new radios and 12 pagers.
Although the board had previously agreed to collect quotes for financing the purchase, after talking with the bank, supervisors needed to alter their plan.
“The bank wanted collateral,” Supervisor Charles Godwin said during a regularly scheduled meeting Thursday.
One idea mentioned as possible collateral was the fire truck fund, which the county uses to purchase and maintain fire trucks. However, County Administrator Steve Seale, who the board re-hired at their Oct. 1 meeting, said that option was no good.
“We don’t have any money in the fire truck line,” he said, reminding the board they used that money to purchase a fire truck for the City of Union. “It’s gone.”
However, he said, the board had budgeted a 20-percent increase for health insurance premiums, which, they learned Thursday, would not be increasing.
“You could use some of that,” he said.
Before agreeing to put that money in a CD to be used as collateral, which would mean the county wouldn’t be able to use it for the length of the loan, the board wanted to make sure purchasing the radios was the right decision.
“We need to make something happen, but we need to make sure it can happen,” said Supervisor Joe Alexander.
E-911 Director Brian Taylor said he had tried to cut the purchase cost down as much as possible – originally asking for 145 radios instead of 120 – but there wasn’t much more to cut. He said he had also explored upgrading the county’s current VHF system instead of switching to the state-run Mississippi Wireless Information Network. However, Taylor said, the cost of upgrading the county’s system would have been around $400,000, and it still wouldn’t have the inter-agency connectivity of the MSWIN system.
While $171,000 for radios is expensive, Taylor said, it’s a lot cheaper than upgrading the current system.
“It’s $280,000 less,” he said.
“What you submitted needs to be bought,” Alexander told Taylor. “But we’ve gotta do something we can find the financing for.”
Taylor provided each of the supervisors a list of radios, call volume and response rate for each of the first responder agencies in the county. The board promised to review the list and work toward making the radio purchase happen.
