New group brought in for radio fixes
County Commission approves new service contract for 911 at special called meeting
Faulty radio towers could soon be a problem of the past for Polk’s 911 Operations Center that recently began a year-long service agreement with tech company Diversified.
While the approved service budget is not to exceed $42,000, the money to be taken out of the county’s general fund should adequately cover the maintenance and upkeep the company will perform in the months to come.
The agreement is the newest in a line of attempted radio tower fixes. None have completely ended the 911 center’s problems with missed traffic and communication, but Diversified did manage to resolve a few issues when they downgraded the tower firmware earlier in October.
“They did back the firmware down,” 911 Director Crystal Vincent said at a previous meeting. “It helped some, but we’re still having issues.”
While results are pending, the group also hired Diversified to replace the tower’s network switches in a bid to finally end the problems. Once fixed, the provided maintenance should prevent the towers from causing similar problems.
Coosa Valley -- the previous company working on the towers -- was not performing preventative maintenance before the issues occurred.
“Before, it was reactive on our part,” Commissioner Hal Floyd said during the special called November 16 meeting. “Something would break and we would fix it-as opposed to being preventative and proactive. Although we’ve got issues, this (the new agreement) will solve those issues.”
The radio towers present in Polk’s cities, as well as those belonging to the fire departments, are on the same system as the county’s towers, so maintenance will also eventually need to be performed within each municipality.
“We’ve got Rockmart, Cedartown, Aragon, and then Cedartown Fire and Rockmart fire,” Vincent said. “They’re also on the system, and they’re also going to have to get their radios worked on. This is just for the county.”
Diversified is set to begin work within Polk in late November, and those interested in the future of the towers should look towards future county meetings.