Hinds Co. moves forward on E911 system with state

After a years-long storied battle over control and maintenance of the county’s E911 emergency communications system, Hinds County has taken the final step to join the statewide system, officials said.

“We realized we were putting our first responders’ lives at risk,” said Peggy Calhoun, a Hinds County supervisor, noting ongoing failures with the county’s system. “It was past time to do something.”

The Mississippi Wireless Information System, or MSWIN, with its 22,000 current users, would allow interoperability not only within agencies in Hinds County but throughout the state.

Tony Greer, president of the Hinds County Board of Supervisors, called the changeover “the most significant thing this board has done.”

The board actually voted in May to pay for a new system and join the Mississippi Wireless Information System, or MSWIN, but finishing touches were not put on the contract until late last week.

Hinds moves to become part of state emergency system

The county had been waiting on the city of Jackson to decide if it would opt in, said Greer. With Jackson, the system would cost the county $8 million; without Jackson, the figure would drop to $5 million, he said. All municipalities in Hinds County have the option to opt in.

Wishing to move forward, Greer said Hinds County negotiated a deal with the state that gives Jackson until the end of the year to opt in.

Greer said joining MSWIN offers the county major savings, especially over previous arrangements. The county had contracted with AirWave LLC, and Greer said the arrangement had bled the 911 fund dry. The county will ultimately save around $80,000 a month that was going to maintenance with AirWave, he said.

“And they didn’t do anything. We started looking into it to see what they did, and it wasn’t much,” he said.

The changeover will take place over the next nine to 12 months, said Ricky Moore, Hinds County Emergency Operations Center director, adding that the county will be able to use its existing towers.

Supervisor Robert Graham, a steadfast opponent of joining the state system, remains unconvinced the move is in the best interest of Hinds County.

“If we’re going to have to go out and borrow money for a new system, then why not just keep it instead of giving it to the state along with our radio towers?” he said. “So the question becomes, what does the county get? The answer is nothing.”

Graham contends that even though the state will pay maintenance, it will not save the county money because a new system would need very little maintenance anyway.

Securing a system that wouldn’t have involved the state would have cost the county $13 million to $18 million, county officials had said, and it still would have required the purchase of a maintenance package.

Graham also expressed concern that at some point there could be user fees, a point of contention when the system first started to flourish. Robert Latham, executive director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said that will not be an issue for government entities.

“If you have a private company, like an ambulance service, there will be capability for them to get on the network, and that’s where the user fees might come in,” he said. “But public entities will never pay a user fee.”

Graham’s criticism of MSWIN further extends to potential system failure inside buildings, which he said could put lives at risk. Latham said while no system is foolproof, the state system has 98 percent operability.

Moore added that responders across the county are in favor of the move because of MSWIN’s reliability.

“We’ve had periods when the county system has gone down,” he said. “But MSWIN has built-in redundancy — it’s more redundant than any system that’s out there. They have backup over backup, because with things like hurricanes and tornado threats, nothing’s ever foolproof, but that system is state of the art. It is a whole lot better than what we’re operating on.”

Vickie Helfrich, executive officer of the Wireless Communications Commission, said the best feature of MSWIN is that it cuts out the middle man. It allows immediate communication among federal, state and local agencies. There are more than 40 special event talk groups that agencies can join in case of an interjurisdictional event, she said.

For example, MSWIN was used in the recent case of a Delta State University professor who killed his girlfriend in Gautier, then drove to the DSU campus where he shot and killed a professor. Law enforcement agencies at all levels were on the hunt for him, and MSWIN provided immediate communications capability.

Latham said the state realized the need to develop a system in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina 10 years ago when agencies from all over the state needed to communicate.

“Sometimes we were writing notes and someone had to deliver them to someone else,” Latham said, illustrating how catastrophic a system failure can be.

Contact Therese Apel at tapel@gannett.com. Follow @Trex21 on Twitter.