Kewaunee County votes to join statewide public safety comm system

KEWAUNEE COUNTY – During the Oct. 15 Kewaunee County Board of Supervisors meeting, the board unanimously voted to join the statewide public safety interoperable communication system.

State statute requires the Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs to provide grants to local public safety agencies for upgrades of equipment.

The current estimate to purchase the county radio equipment is $1,682,374.
The county will receive grant revenue of $1,345,898, with a county match of $106,850 and a match from local agencies of $229,626.

“So, this was the grant. The way it’s written is it’s one application per county, so I’m currently literally going through that application process, and that would be covering all entities — so your highway department emergency management, your first responders, rescue and fire, and local EMS —so that’s all captured in that 80/20 match. So, again they are granted the same 80% they just have to meet that 20%,” explained Kewaunee County Sheriff Matt Joski.

“As a background, over a decade ago we made a choice to align ourselves with the state and it’s called the WISCOM (Wisconsin Interoperable System for Communications) interoperability communication system.

“So, now we’re fast forward over a decade. Of course, like anything with technology, it’s become end-of-life and they’re doing a reboot of it. So one of the biggest parts of that sort of reintegration is going to be going from VHF to 800 that’s a different frequency band of radios that requires us to then turn over all these radios.

“That’s a positive, as we will now be in alignment with Brown County, who is already (using) 800. Manitowoc County is already (using) 800, and Door County, I just spoke with their director yesterday, they are working towards (using) 800. Their transition date is approximately 2028. They’re doing their own system on their own dime. We are very fortunate that, as the state is building this out, this time, they’re bundling the whole thing together and they’re including our local subsystems.

“So, the expectation of the deliverable is 95% portable coverage at the hip, at the state’s cost. We’re probably about two to three years out. They’re starting up in the northeast quadrant. They’re going to go down to the southeast quadrant and then work up to eastcentral, where we are. So we’re about two to three years out, but we want to be leaning forward on these radio procurements because we don’t want to wait until the system is ready to go and then say, okay, let’s find some radios so we’re definitely leaning forward.”