HAYDEN J EMRAH
WZBD.com
In their November meeting, Sheriff Mawhorr approached the Adams County Council to seek potential funding for a new dispatcher service for the Sheriff’s Department.
The current software is over 11 years old and has reached its end-of-life support, meaning there are no more updates or services being provided, which, over time, will make the software less compatible with hardware and cause the program to slow down. The new software will cost an estimated $68,242.
Sheriff Mawhorr stated that while getting new software was not budgeted for the department, there are potential methods of funding the software come January. While ARPA funds are always an option, there’s also an E911 fund–grant funding specifically for the use of upgrading 911 equipment–that has around $17,500 that could be used towards the software. There’s also the county general fund or a federal prisoner program for the county that has brought in $386,000 as of the November meeting.
While no decisions were made on the methods of funding, Mawhorr wanted to make the council aware of the options so that they could have a definitive answer for him come January.
The dispatch software allows for Sheriff dispatchers to see the location of those who call the department, so ensuring that the software is fully-functional and up-to-date is essential for Sheriff’s Department operations.
