Commissioners OK county phone upgrades

Lorain County commissioners approved a contract Dec. 12 to bring new phone equipment and licenses to county offices.

The $736,798 contract was awarded to Warwick of Broadview Heights for the hardware and licenses.

County Administrator James Cordes said the county last updated its phone system in 1998 at a cost of about $2.5 million.

“The (current) platform is not supported,” Cordes said. “There’s no more techs out there that can support this.”

The county was able to benefit from people who’d already upgraded their phones, but were able to come out and make repairs on the system, he said.

Now, most of those technicians have retired, Cordes said.

“Our folks are good at dealing with the smaller issues and keeping things under control,” he said. “But more and more, we’re seeing failures in the phone system, plus we cannot get any tech support at all.

“I think last time, we had to fly someone in from Chile to work on the system.”

In addition, the commissioners approved two threeyear contracts with nexVortex, of Herndon, Va., to provide phone service to the County Administration Building in Elyria and the Job and Family Services in Elyria Township.

These contracts will provide phone service and not the equipment or system, Cordes said after the meeting.

In other news, the commissioners awarded a $273,342 contract to D&M Earthmoving LTD., of Wakeman, to construct the Clinton Avenue Ditch Storm Water Management Facility in Sheffield Township.

Cordes said this is a continuation of the stream restoration projects the county has been undergoing.

“A few times, the Sheffield Township hall would be under a little bit of water, and their Fire Department was back there, too, plus it all flowed down into the 36th Street Ditch,” he said. “We purchased land to do a retention facility north just off, behind, Lake and Elyria avenues.”

Cordes said that while the county was in talks about procuring the land, the trees in the area were sold off to timber companies that failed to restore the land and it was turning into wetlands.

This led to delays which ended up turning out well for the county financially.

“We were able to receive grant money to do what they call stream restoration areas back there,” he said. “The only issue with the stream restoration is that it was not able to retain enough of the water that we wanted to by detention and then doing a slow release of that water.”

Finally, the county settled on a location near the Lorain County Board of Elections and Gargasz Hall.

Also, the commissioners will advertise for bids for a new boiler in the Lorain County Justice Center.

Commissioner Lori Kokoski seemed to have some angst about the fact one of the two boilers in the almost 15-year-old building already is having trouble.

“Boilers usually last a lot longer than that,” Kokoski said.

Cordes said the county has been aware of the issue for about a year and the time has come to get it done.

“We have ample capacity with what we have,” he said. “But I don’t want to be sitting and having not made the repair on this.”