FARMINGTON — Franklin County commissioners agreed Tuesday to use $5,000 from the county’s tax-increment financing district’s emergency communications fund toward a comprehensive communications study, if the county receives a federal grant.
Tim Hardy, director of the county’s Emergency Management Agency, said the county has applied for a regional grant of $69,386.57 through the Department of Homeland Security.
After some of that grant is used for other agency programs, there would be $67,886.57 left, Hardy said Wednesday. The plan, if the county gets the grant, is to use approximately $5,000 for a study to leverage the TIF money and use the remaining money to help implement emergency radio communications improvements countywide.
Stan Wheeler, director of the Franklin County Regional Communications Center, told commissioners Tuesday that a comprehensive study of the county has never been done and the estimate to complete the study is nearly $10,000.
One problem is that the county’s terrain varies from mountains, hills and valleys, which causes some problems with radio communications.
Wheeler said emergency responders are always telling him about trouble with radio communications.
He recently spoke to Wilton police Chief Heidi Wilcox, who told him that in several cases, her officers could not communicate with dispatchers. In two instances, Wheeler said, officers were struggling with a person and were trying to call for backup — but dispatchers couldn’t hear them.
“A study is not going to do a damn thing about that,” Commission Chairman Fred Hardy of New Sharon said.
Wheeler said four vendors were contacted, and they each came up with different recommendations on how to fix the communications issues.
He said a consultant could build on what those four vendors recommended and help them sift through the recommendations and come up with both short- and long-term plans.
He has had a consultant working on the problem pro bono, but it has come to a point where he will need to be paid to continue.
Hardy said they have not sat down and developed a plan, but have tried to temporarily fix problems with so-called “Band-Aids.”
Commissioner Clyde Barker of Strong said he learned recently that there were times in Strong where firefighters cannot communicate with dispatchers. He has also heard that Phillips and Rangeley are having similar problems.
“The quicker we get this going, the better off we will be,” Barker said. “We are at a dangerous point” with woodstove season approaching.
“If we get the communication study completed, we would meet the TIF requirement” to have a plan in place, which would make available some of the $150,000 in the emergency communications TIF funds currently available to improve emergency communications, county Clerk Julie Magoon said.
County commissioners entered into a credit-enhancement agreement in 2008 with TransCanada Maine Wind Development Inc., a wholly owned affiliate of TransCanada Corp. The agreement is related to the development of the 44-turbine Kibby Wind Power Project on Kibby Mountain and Kibby Range in northern Franklin County.
The agreement allows for 75 percent of the new taxes to be retained by the county for 20 years, with county commissioners reimbursing the company 60 percent of those new taxes annually during that span. The remainder of the TIF funds would be dedicated to the county for economic development in the unorganized territory.
The county is expected to retain $4 million for 20 years to enhance economic development in that area.
dperry@sunjournal.com
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