MOUNT VERNON — County Commissioners Thom Collier and Roger Reed signed a $212,485 contract on Thursday to upgrade the county’s 911 phone system.
“This upgrade will allow us to be ready for text 911 when it becomes available,” said Jason Booth, county administrator.
Laura Webster, Knox County 9-1-1 operations director, said that although the county won’t be going to text 911 right now, dispatchers can immediately use the system’s capability to send a text back to the caller in situations where the caller hangs up or no one is on the line when dispatch answers.
“If we don’t get a response [to the text], we will try and call back,” she said. “It will eliminate a lot of things just being able to send that text out.”
Webster said the upgrade has some good location features, such as when the mapping software has a hard time plotting the location or the caller is in a wooded area. In situations where the caller is unable to talk freely, the system sends a text, the caller responds with a “yes,” and the system will map the coordinates.
“This system also stores history which comes up when that phone number comes up. It tells us the number of times called, when the calls came, and the dispatcher can make notes,” she said. “The reporting system is excellent. It will automatically send 911 reports to state.”
Webster said she also likes the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) software with the new system. She hopes to upgrade the CAD system in 2019 as the current CAD system is 10 years old.
The new system comes from South Dakota-based Zuercher Technologies and costs less than the $216,000 price from Century Link, the current vendor. The $23,000 annual maintenance is also less than the current $28,000. Booth said the money is in the 2018 budget.
“This has been ongoing, a several months process,” said Booth. “It’s a lot of money, but either way we are going to have to invest the money.”
He said the installation is pretty involved, and he anticipates the upgrade to take four to six months. “Our goal is to be fully live by the end of the year,” he said.
OhioMeansJobs Center
Administrator Diana Williams updated the commissioners on 2017 activities at the OhioMeansJobs Knox County Center.
One statistic that caught her eye was a drop in caseload. Closer analysis revealed that the number of people getting cash assistance dropped, but the number getting food stamps did not.
Matthew Kurtz, director of Knox County Job & Family Services, said another population that has grown are individuals receiving SSI (supplemental security income) and SDI (supplemental disability income).
Williams said that 137 people moved into full-time employment. “With 4 percent unemployment, those who are left have issues that preclude them from working,” said Kurtz.
Williams said a new program working with the court system yielded only five participants the first time, but three of the five found employment. She hopes to have 10 participants in the next program. She is also working with various agencies to get permission to design programs in-house so that the program can be tailored to local needs.
Institute for Community Resilience
Kurtz told the commissioners that bids on the Institute for Community Resilience, the new building to be constructed next to the Children’s Resource Center on Coshocton Road, came in one-third higher than what he estimated. He recommended taking another look at the project and “see where we can pare back.”
Noting the number of building projects going on locally and in Central Ohio, Kurtz said that he did not think that simply rebidding the project would yield different results. He also was reluctant to accept the bids and then ask for another $1 million in funding.
“I don’t think it would be the best stewardship to ask for an extra million without going back to the drawing board,” he said. “My perspective is I need to do due diligence as if it were my own money. We might still have to come back and ask for more bonding, but at least we will have facts and specifics.”
Dave Paxton, chief clinical officer for The Village Network, the company that operates the Children’s Resource Center, spoke about the success of a ground-breaking approach to treating troubled youth at the CRC. Formally called the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics, the approach identifies how traumatic experiences (also known as ACES, adverse childhood experiences) might have altered the child’s brain during development.
“It’s not asking ‘what’s wrong with you,’ it’s asking ‘what happened to you,’” Paxton explained.
“Since [the CRC] opened in 1999, there has not been one child who has not been neglected, abused, or had some type of toxic stress,” he said. “Many of the struggles they have are due to childhood trauma.”
Dr. Bruce Perry developed the approach the CRC uses, and Paxton said it is proven science based on neuroscience.
When built, the Institute for Community Resilience will almost double the space available to the program and will include classrooms used for training educators and other community members about NMT. Paxton said the training will allow others to take the concept beyond the 20 youths the CRC serves to more than 100 youths in the community.
