The Central Communications Center is working to establish a backup site where dispatchers would answer emergency calls if the center goes offline in a disaster, 911 director Sherri Henry said.
The center, which receives funding from Crawfordsville and Montgomery County, has purchased virtual servers and portable phone systems to power up the second facility.
“We’re … in the process of determining where that location’s going to be,” Henry said as she presented her 2021 budget request to the county council Thursday.
The center was approved for about $80,000 in CARES Act funding to cover the equipment, with the city and county each contributing half of the cost, Henry said. Two of the center’s main servers had needed replaced.
The mobile phone systems come packed in cases that dispatchers can carry to the backup site. They are capable of running on consumer-grade connections such as 3G or 4G wireless networks.
Other county departments are using federal coronavirus relief funds to recoup money spent on pandemic response.
Clerk Karyn Douglas said the CARES Act would cover the extra money above what the county normally would have spent on June’s primary. Douglas said she didn’t know when the money’s coming in. The county saw a surge in mailed-in ballots this spring, raising the cost of postage.
More than 3,300 people voted absentee by mail in the spring, an eleven-fold increase from a typical primary election, she said.
The Indiana Secretary of State’s office has informed counties that more CARES Act funding would be available for the fall election.
Douglas has already asked to transfer money from elsewhere in the budget for additional elections supplies. With no elections to run in 2021, Douglas said the office would stock up on envelopes, ballot paper and ink next year.
“We are pretty much at bare bones on everything, and this is a normal thing that we do on off-years,” Douglas said.
