Jasper County acquires third radio tower to improve communications

With the acquisition of a third radio tower — that was approved on April 4 by the board of supervisors — Jasper County’s communication system is now fully completed and will connect first responders in every community and provide redundancies in case of a natural disaster.

Lt. Brad Shutts of the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office said the tower site is located along Pinion Avenue in Vandalia, an unincorporated community in the county. Shutts said the 700-foot tower would fill in gaps in the county’s communication system and provide another backup in case one tower site went down.

“We’d be able to backhaul through to get the main brain boxes, so to speak, of the Racom network,” Shutts said. “There are three different locations around the state that have those brain boxes. Currently, we just have one way in to that system. We’re looking for that opportunity to add that redundancy.”

Much of the radio equipment would reside in a communications shelter already present at the Vandalia tower site. As part of the agreement, the county purchased 120 Unication G4 Pagers and received an additional dozen free of charge, which saved the county about $120,000, Shutts said.

In the final phase of the county’s communications system, the engineer’s office will also receive updated radios. Shutts said the secondary roads department’s current radios have low range, and that adding them onto the system would allow improved communications when needed.

To pay for the radio equipment and new tower site, Jasper County will have a three-year budget plan to pay more than $1.13 million. The first payment will be more than $377,000 starting this month. The following invoices and payments will be in July 2023 and July 2024.

Supervisors decided to pay for the system using the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds designated for the sheriff’s office’s advanced life support program. Jasper County Supervisor Denny Stevenson said it will also require the county to adjust its debt service levy but not by much, and it would only last two years.

“I’d like to see us do this,” Stevenson said. “And Brad knows this, but we kind of got behind the eight ball when we maybe should have done some of this stuff years ago. But we’re finally up there. We’re finally (at a point) where we can communicate well. Having redundancy in it, I think, is hugely important.”

There are communication challenges between the engineer’s office and sheriff’s office when there is a natural disaster, which was alluded to by supervisor Brandon Talsma. Shutts confirmed there is almost no communication with the engineer’s office, but the new equipment would fix that.

County engineer Michael Frietsch said, “Think of last fall. We had some brush fires. We had motor graders out there, and there was no way to communicate with them unless they had their personal cell phones. That would be nice if we get situations like that.”

Jasper County Supervisor Doug Cupples asked if the county will need another tower in the future. Shutts said no.

“This would finish out the piece and we would still utilize our neighboring county ones,” Shutts said. “I don’t see any need for any additional tower in the future.”