STEUBENVILLE — The Jefferson County Commissioners are looking into what it will take to replace the county’s outdated, failing phone system.

Auditor E.J. Conn said Friday he’ll ask commissioners to issue a request for proposals to replace the county’s entire system. Conn said they originally hoped to speed the replacement process up by declaring it to be an emergency, but since there was no precipitating disaster they weren’t going to be able to circumvent the request process.

During Thursday’s meeting, Juvenile Court Administrator Joe Colabella had told commissioners the current system has become “a persistent problem.”

“The phones that service juvenile court go out of service multiple times each week,” he reported. “Juvenile court is a 24/7 operation. It is imperative that the court is not without phone service for any period of time.”

Colabella said whenever the system crashes he has to “make several calls in order for someone to come in and reset the system, which causes the court to be without phone service.” That’s an issue, because police departments contact them to make arrangements to bring juveniles to detention, some of them with housing contracts requiring the court to hold beds in reserve for them.

“We don’t want to lose business, plus we’re servicing the public,” he said. “I know the county has been working on this — if there’s movement on it, we’re good. If not, then our court is going to have to do something to alleviate this problem.”

Commissioners agreed it should be treated as an emergency, since juvenile court is not the only county office complaining about the existing system.

Conn is chair of the county’s data processing board, which set up a subgroup — a phone committee — more than a year ago to look into the county’s needs and, after the proposal request is issued, make a recommendation based on those needs. He said they would need roughly 450 phones.

“It is an emergency — for sure we need phones,” Conn said. “But even with declaring it an emergency you can’t speed up the process — it either has to be under, I think, $25,000 due to some physical disaster. That forces you into a request for proposals, at that point.”

He said the existing phones were purchased about 20 years ago and are no longer in production, so it’s difficult to obtain replacement parts. Conn said the current system also “lacks a lot of the features of a more modern phone system.”

He said he’s hoping to get the request for proposals drafted and the language approved so he can bring it to commissioners for consideration during this Thursday’s meeting.

Conn also updated commissioners on the cause of a network outage Wednesday that crashed their Wi-Fi — including video connections between city and county courts and the jail, disrupting scheduled video arraignments.

He said they discovered “somebody plugged a network cable into a switch” and are working to put policies in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Commissioners also agreed to transfer $60,000 to the Friendship Park fund “to ensure (its) continued operation” and voiced support for efforts to secure funding for an ADA-accessible fishing pier. The park board reminded commissioners they’d discussed the funding issue during budget meetings.

Engineering department contracts were awarded to:

• Jefferson Landmark Inc. of Bloomingdale, Riley Petroleum Products of Steubenville and Petroleum Traders Corp. of Fort Wayne, Ind., for fuel;

• Quick Mow Inc. of Millersburg, $42,822 for mowing;

• East Fairfield Coal Co. of Petersburg, Howard Bowers Contracting of Wintersville, Sidwell Materials of St. Clairsville, National Lime and Stone Co. of Cadiz and Kelly Paving of Weirton for aggregates; and

• NLS Paving Inc. of St. Clairsville, Kelly Paving of Rayland and Asphalt Materials of Marietta for bituminous products.