Emergency services are likely to be better able to respond to calls in Stark County and to coordinate with state safety personnel when a new radio system goes online in a few months. It's been years in the making.
The new system, known as MARCS, or Multi Agency Radio Communications System, will connect safety forces and agencies throughout the county, and elsewhere in the state.
County Commissioner Richard Regula says the Sheriff’s office and Stark Council of Governments were largely responsible for bringing the idea forward and getting all of the county’s communities on board. “For the last three years they’ve been putting this plan together. We renewed the criminal justice sales tax, because it’s a $12 million dollar project. And we’re going to go live by, I believe, by 01-01-19.”
Transmission and reception towers similar to a cell phone system will be built countywide. And there will be about a thousand radios for personnel at $2,000 apiece.