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Belmont County's 911 system is getting an upgrade.
Belmont County 911 Director Bryan Minder told commissoners about the work Wednesday and urged residents to register with the reverse 911 system.
The Belmont County Board of Commissioners during its weekly meeting entered a service agreement with Motorola Solutions for a radio system upgrade at a cost of $1,174,526, to be paid for with levy funds. The cost includes Essential Plus Lifecycle Services for two years.
Minder said the three-step upgrade process would begin with purchasing two remote-operator radio positions used daily by dispatchers.
"These will be on laptops. These can be used anywhere in the world, so our dispatchers can take and deploy these. As long as they have an internet connection, they will be connected to our county's radio system remotely, and they'll be able to sit down and dispatch from anywhere," he said.
In answering a question from Commissioner Jerry Echemann, Minder said the levy is 911's primary source of funds.
Minder also promoted the Code Red system that notifies residents in the event of emergencies.
"We ask everybody, whether you think you might be in our database or not, please go onto our website -- belmontcounty911.com. Sign yourself up as long as you're a Belmont County resident," he said. "You can sign up by text, you can sign up by email, you can sign up by voice for your phone. We can give weather alerts … pretty much just any kind of emergency that will affect you."
Residents can also text the word "BELMONT" to 99411.
Minder said communities such as Bellaire, Shadyside and St. Clairsville have been using the Code Red system to send alerts.
Also, Minder is putting word out that at noon April 4 his office will do a countywide call for the entire database.
"Every number that's in our database -- we have over 50,000 numbers currently -- we're going to call them all, and if they don't answer or they come back with a 'no longer in service' message, those numbers are going to be purged out of our database to clean it up, essentially."
Minder said if residents miss the call, a message will be left and they will be able to respond later.
He also said the state is also looking into next generation 911, incorporating text and images and establishing a statewide system.