By By BETTY MITCHELL GRAY
betty@wdnweb.com
Contributing Writer
Emergency notifications by telephone could be available across Beaufort County within 60 days following action Monday night by the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners.
The board unanimously approved a six-month contract with DeltAltert of Houston, Texas, that will bring the first emergency and mass-notification system to telephones across Beaufort County.
When implemented, the system could send prerecorded 30-second emergency messages to all telephone users, depending on the availability of telephone lines, in Beaufort County in just over 23 minutes, said John Pack, Beaufort County’s emergency-management coordinator.
He hopes to have the system in use in two months and fully implemented by the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, which begins June 1.
The system will be able to carry messages about approaching hurricanes, chemical spills, road closures or interruptions in water or electrical supplies “without depending on people watching television at two in the morning,” he said.
Similar systems are already in use by the City of Washington — which sends telephone notifications of changes in garbage collection schedules to its residents — and in the Beaufort County Schools — which sends telephone messages of upcoming school events to families of its students.
“We will be able to notify each household that something is happening of an emergency nature or something is happening that will alter their lifestyle,” Pack said.
The system will allow users to target messages to specific geographic areas of the county that could be affected by an emergency or an interruption of service, he said.
While land-line notification will be available first to residents, once the system is fully functional, residents will be able to chose to be notified first at their homes or cellular telephones or by text message, Pack said.
The system can be used by numerous county departments as well as volunteer first-responder agencies across the county, he told the board.
Several groups, including homeowners associations, local businesses and municipalities, have agreed to be partners in the system and help offset the cost of the program, Pack told the board.
The cost of a six-month license fee with DeltAlert that includes a 60,000 message bank is $3,900. Additional messages are available at 5.5 cents per message in excess of the message bank allotment. The fee for a full year, beginning July 1, is $7,800 and will include a 120,000 message bank, according to information provided to the board.
The cost of messages sent during a federally declared disaster can be refunded to the county from Federal Emergency Management Agency funds, Pack said.
In other business, the board:
• Unanimously approved a lease agreement with NextMedia for the construction of a replacement for the Bath radio tower. Under the proposal, NextMedia will build, at a cost of $737,000, a 511-foot-tall tower that will replace the 24-year-old, 411-foot-tall radio tower at Bath on property owned by the county. NextMedia will lease the land from the county for $1 per year for 30 years to broadcast its radio station WQZL, currently being broadcast from an aging radio tower near Aurora. The county will pay NextMedia $1 per year for 30 years to lease space on the tower to broadcast messages to emergency responders and other agencies. The cost of placing new antennae and cable on the tower is estimated to be $60,000, the commissioners were told.
• Unanimously authorized Beaufort County Tax Administrator Bobby Parker to advertise delinquent property taxes in March. Second notices are scheduled to be mailed at the end of the week, Parker reported. As of Jan. 31, there were 22,883 delinquent tax bills, including tax bills for motor vehicles, he said.
• Unanimously a plan by the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office to buy a 2011 Chevrolet Tahoe with drug-forfeiture funds. The new Tahoe would be used by the sheriff’s office in its narcotics division, according to information given to the commissioners.
• Unanimously approved a property tax refund of $390.80 for 2010 for Rosalyn Hudson of Blounts Creek and a $1,644.22 2008 and 2009 property tax refund to Enterprise Leasing Co. of Wilmington.
• Unanimously approved an audit contract with Thompson, Price, Scott and Adams for auditing Beaufort County’s financial statement for fiscal year ending 2011 with the provision that the firm be excluded from bidding on the contract for the following fiscal year. The fee charged to the county for the audit is $40,475 plus $1,000 for preparation of the annual financial statements. Year-end bookkeeping assistance, if need, will be billed separately at standard rates, according to the contract.
• Unanimously authorized the filing of an application for approval of a guaranteed energy savings contract with Schneider Electric to install energy-conservation measures in Beaufort County government buildings to reduce energy consumption and energy-related operating costs. In a related vote, the commissioners also unanimously approved a contact with Schneider Electric for an amount not to exceed $2.35 million pending further review and execution of the contract by board Chairman Jerry Langley. The energy savings resulting from the project are expected to equal or exceed the total costs payable under the contract, according to information given to the commissioners.
• Delayed action on a request by the sheriff’s office to use drug-forfeiture funds to buy a GPS tracking system for the patrol division. If approved, the sheriff’s office would have the equipment installed on all 20 of its marked patrol units for an annual cost of $9,600. The commissioners agreed to consider the proposal as part of their 2011-2012 fiscal-year budget discussions.
• Delayed action until today on an application for 2010 for a builder’s inventory deferral by Chris Furlough.
All commissioners attended the meeting.