Commissioners approve HCSO software upgrades; hear update on MARCS radios

One week after debating a proposal to convert the Highland County Sheriff’s Office’s software system into the cloud and discussing concerns about the costs involved, Highland County commissioners Brad Roades, Terry Britton and David Daniels agreed Wednesday, May 21 to proceed.

The county currently contracts with CentralSquare for their 911 system. Commissioners, along with Highland County Sheriff Randy Sanders and county 911 coordinator Scott Miller, met with representatives of the company at both their May 14 and May 21 meetings.

The issue of primary focus for commissioners May 14 was the cost, including whether it was of better value than upgrading the current hardware system at the justice center and whether the sheriff’s office, or the county, could cover the costs in this year’s budget. That also seemed to be a driving factor in choosing to move forward, after CentralSquare agreed to delay invoicing until next year, as discussed by their sales director Randy McCloskey via teleconference Wednesday.

“Understanding where you're at with your budget year, we wanted to be able to offer having you sign for the cloud now and not have to have you pay anything until 2026, so that you can put it in your budget for 2026,” McCloskey said. “This cloud is something that takes you into the future. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. It's advantageous for both of us to be able to do this now, and that is part of the reasoning why we're offering what we're offering.”

Daniels said the county’s current contract with CentralSquare expires in March 2026, as the company presented this proposal last week due to a current promotional offer. McCloskey confirmed Daniels’ statement that “payment would not be due until our current contract with you expires, and then it would be an extension into next year.”

Daniels also asked if the county could “run on a dual system” during the implementation process until they are sure there are no problems with the crossover.

“We'll actually put the environment into a training or testing environment, and that's where all of the work and testing and things like that will happen, but there will be that point where we will switch over,” McCloskey said. “That switchover, as I mentioned last week, should be less than 10 minutes.

“We have all eyes on this, literally all eyes on this. If there's a scenario, unlikely scenario, it's something that it could be switched.”

On a related topic, Britton asked about the “lead time” for the upgrades. McCloskey said they could implement the Centerline AI program (included for five years at no additional cost) “within 10 to 30 days,” with the actual conversion to the cloud depending on how quickly they can get testing completed.

“I want to see this up and running in early fall at the latest,” McCloskey said.

Daniels asked the HCSO if they were “comfortable moving forward” if commissioners approved it.

“I’ve been in law enforcement for 40 years. [Technology] keeps changing, and it keeps passing us up,” Sanders said. “I knew this was not coming up till next year, so I hadn't looked into it really at all, and I like to look into stuff.

“We sat down with the people that's in charge, the people that I moved to the administrative part, and I said — they all agreed with me — when we set to do something, we’re not looking to do it to fix something for tomorrow. We're looking to fix it so five years from now, we're where we should be.”

Sanders added that although he doesn’t “like to spend money,” he realizes that “prices are just going to go up,” so he “didn’t want to miss the opportunity” to save money on it now.

Miller agreed from the perspective of moving the 911 system to the cloud as well.

“Cybersecurity is a big thing right now,” Miller said. “CentralSquare’s guaranteeing that we will be in better shape if something would happen. We will not lose our data, and it’s very minimal downtime.”

Daniels thanked CentralSquare for “solving our budgeting concerns.

“We know that we’ve got outdated equipment that one way or another, we were going to end up with additional expenses going into next year, regardless of whether we switch to the cloud to upgrade our hardware,” Daniels said. “As long as we've got the opportunity to budget for it in our upcoming budget, I think that that helps us out.”

Britton agreed that they have time to “plan for that,” and all three commissioners said they were on board with the proposal.

Commissioners voted 3-0 to approve the agreement. According to commission clerk Ashleigh Willey, they received and signed contracts with CentralSquare later in the day Wednesday. As mentioned May 14, the total quote is for $137,364.18, and as discussed May 21, it can be canceled at any time with 30 days’ notice to CentralSquare. The Centerline AI program is free for five years, after which the quoted cost is $21,500 annually.

On another topic related to recent upgrades, commissioners asked Sanders, Miller and Highland County Emergency Management Agency director David Bushelman for an update on the county’s MARCS radio upgrades.

All MARCS radios are required to have Link Layer Authentication upgrades by July 1. The estimated cost of upgrades across all municipalities in the county was $637,600, while the total cost on the county’s side was estimated to be approximately $282,950.

Sanders said that “except for upfront dispatch,” the HCSO radios have been replaced. The problem they have run into is that the state is backed up on issuing radio IDs, due to the required upgrades for every agency in the state.

“From what we’ve heard, I guess it's this way across the state,” Sanders said. “They're going to have to get busy, but it’s supposed to be done in the next month and 10 days.”

Roades asked what will happen if the state doesn’t assign IDs by the July 1 deadline.

“If they don't have updated radios, then dispatch communications will cease,” Bushelman said. “Now, we'll still be able to communicate out in the field to each other, because all police, fire and EMS radios, portables and handhelds, to my knowledge, are all upgraded in the county, so we're good there.

“Everything that I'm hearing from MARCS, July 1, they're flipping the switch, and if the radios aren't upgraded, they won't work.”

In response to a question from Britton, Miller said there “really isn’t any difference” between the outside radios and dispatch radios.

“We've just been waiting three months to get the radios in and then get MARCS to get us the IDs,” Miller said. “We do have the handhelds that we can dispatch on if they flip the switch before giving us our IDs.”

Daniels said he had “a difficult time thinking that [the state] will switch this over before their problem is corrected,” although Bushelman said he has been told the state is “steadfast on that date.”

“Law enforcement agencies and first responders were pushed to this network to begin with, so it's their idea that they would put our safety forces in danger when they've got a problem on their end?” Daniels asked. “How do they expect us to communicate when this is their problem? If it was our problem, it'd be a different story.

“They may very well flip the switch. I hope that they don’t. I hope that they don't put our law enforcement people and our first responders in jeopardy as a result of their lack of foresight.”

Britton pointed out that the state also required each county to “come up with the money” to make the upgrades.

“They made the rule, but they didn't support it on the funding side,” Britton said.

Bushelman said the issue was due to “so many old radios” having to be replaced because they could not be upgraded.

“They won't transfer an ID,” Bushelman said. “They'll issue a new ID, and that's where the slowdown has been. A lot of our radios in the county just had to be upgraded, just had to put a chip in, and those went fairly smooth.”

Daniels responded that the county has “done our part” and that the state “needs to do theirs.”

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