STEUBENVILLE — Next generation upgrades coming at Jefferson County’s 911 center will make it more efficient while boosting location accuracy.

A 2023 law mandated all 88 Ohio counties transition from their current, analog systems to NexGen 911’s digital, internet-based system. It’s been fully implemented in 10 counties, with 15 others — among them Jefferson County — now transitioning to the new technology.

911 Director Rob Herrington told commissioners the changeover will make 911 communications faster and more reliable, while expanding their ability to gather information.

“The idea behind NexGen 911 is that the average county, including ours, does about 85 percent of our business through cell calls,” Herrington said. “So, just the speed of processing those calls (will be enhanced) and then, the ability to accept other things — we already can accept texts, but the ability to accept video, pictures and things like that (isn’t available now.)”

Herrington said the new system will give 911 dispatchers that ability.

“Say we have a police officer on the scene of a fire — the officer can actually send us the video from his phone directly to 911, so we can make decisions based on that and get that information to the fire department,” he said. “There’s a lot you can do with the technology that, obviously, is in your hand, in everybody’s hand, so it’s more than just being able to send a picture of an accident or whatever.”

Counties were given a choice between purchasing their own third-party system to connect to the state or use the vendor building the statewide system. Herrington said after researching the costs associated with both choices they opted to use the state’s vendor and pay $172,675 — a more than $100,000 savings over what a third-party system would have cost. And because it’s offered under the state contract they won’t have to bid the contract out.

It will be paid for using existing 911 funds, he said.

“The state, by doing this, they built the funding into this because we will receive additional funding starting next year that will pay for this,” he said. “But they also built a system that we can connect to through their vendor that would be quite a bit cheaper than one through a third party.”

Commissioners signed the agreement to participate in the state’s vendor program. Herrington said he’ll be back at some point to get a work order signed “that will be for the total amount of the project.”

“It’s kind of a win-win,” he said. “I mean, not only are they giving us a discounted way to do it, but they provide the funding to pay for it.”

At the request of Commissioner Eric Timmons, Herrington offered an update about the emergency notification system in use at schools.

The program is now in its third year.

“A lot of the camera stuff is in place,” he said. “There’s still projects going on. The biggest problem we had is all the different schools do things differently. Their security systems, some of them are very old, so as they upgrade (that’s being addressed.)”

State funding has also been made available to help schools implement the system.

“All of our schools in the county have been slowly but surely upgrading those systems, and as they do that, it makes it better. There’s been a lot of connectivity issues over the years with analog camera systems and people that had combination systems and things like that.”

Commissioners also agreed to schedule a viewing and public hearing to evaluate a petition to vacate apportion of Cross Creek Township Road 179A, beginning at its intersection with Valley Glenn Road (township Road 175) to the end of the road.