Centre County will receive $1 million in federal funding to support the replacement and upgrade of emergency radio equipment for first responders throughout the county, the Board of Commissioners announced on Tuesday.
The money will “kickstart” the project to provide approximately 1,400 new mobile and portable radios to fire, EMS and police agencies, Centre County Deputy Administrator Natalie Corman said. U.S. Sen. John Fetterman led the effort to secure the funding from the Congressionally Directed Spending approved in January, with support from Sen. Dave McCormick and Rep. Glenn Thompson.
“These are the emergency service radios, the portables and mobiles that provide the critical communications in the connection between emergency services in the field and our 911 center during emergencies,” Emergency Communications Director Norm Spackman said.
The county has more than 99% coverage for emergency radio communications, Commissioner Mark Higgins said, noting that in many rural parts of the county cell phones simply aren’t an option for first responders. But, he explained, some radios used by emergency response agencies are old and past time for replacement.
“It’s my understanding at this point that some of these older radios, they’re now getting parts off of eBay,” Higgins said. “They’re using duct tape and rubber bands to hold them together.”
He added that money from Congressionally Directed Spending and that “we don’t see a lot of million dollar federal grants here in Centre County.”
When the county began working with Fetterman’s office last May to apply for the funding, the estimated total project cost was $4.1 million, Corman said, and she expects that figure will rise by the time purchasing moves forward.
Full funding of the project will require additional federal or state grants, along with municipal and agency support.
“We kind of jumped on the opportunity to apply for this funding kind of on behalf of all of our partners in the community,” Corman said. “So the $1 million dollars is really just the starting point of what this project’s going to bring to Centre County. It will require millions more in terms of whether that’s local funding, municipality, further state funding that we’re able to secure or federal funding.
“This is really one of those moments where this million dollars hopefully gets to kick off further funding opportunities that our community will benefit from every day and every minute of every day in our community. So it was critical for us to announce that we received this funding because, again, this really kind of kickstarts what we see as necessary for the rest of the funding to be further secured in our community.”
Spackman said that it’s too early to determine what features may be available for the new radios.
“It’ll be the newest technology of radios, so whatever we can implement, we will,” he said.
The county will work with municipalities and agencies on needs for distribution and contribution amounts, Higgins said. He and Commissioner Amber Concepcion both stressed that the volunteer fire companies and EMS serving Centre County are most often reliant on fundraising and memberships, and they urged community members to support them.
“Many of them are volunteers. Many of these ambulance and fire companies are doing their own fundraising efforts on a regular basis to keep their operations solvent,” Concepcion said. “And we need to remember that they’re they’re public servants who are serving all of us, very often on a voluntary basis, Anything we can do to support those companies is really helping the public safety of all of us in our communities.”
