Oct 30, 2025 By Mike Jones 5 min read

The new emergency radio system for first responders in Washington County is on track to be up and running by early 2027, according to the project manager overseeing its implementation.

Dozens of emergency responders from across the county attended an hour-long session Tuesday night at the Washington County Fairgrounds to learn more about where the radio project stands and to ask questions about the new system.

“This is to get to the meat of the project to show you where we are since January,” said Steve Haberman, who is with Mission Critical Partners that is consulting the county on the project. “The reason we’re doing this after 25 years, (the current radio system) was kind of a hodgepodge. There wasn’t a lot of uniformity.”

The county commissioners last August authorized the $24.4 million contract with Motorola Solutions to implement the new P-25 public safety radio system agreement, with Commissioners Nick Sherman and Electra Janis approving it and Commissioner Larry Maggi voting against it. All three commissioners sat at the head table with the speakers during Tuesday night’s informational session, the second one after an initial discussion was held in January.

John Breon, who is the project manager for Motorola, said they have located the 15 sites across Washington County for the radio towers, and he thanked county Public Safety Director Gerry Coleman for helping them to secure the final four locations after running into some delays. Breon said that process is a few months behind, but he added that they should be able to catch up with construction and begin implementing the new emergency radio system by the first quarter of 2027.

“As long as we have a mild winter I can get started and back on schedule,” Breon said of tower construction.

Breon showed the first responders a rudimentary map of the 15 tower sites that will dot Washington County to hopefully give every region adequate coverage. He added that the project will use a “trunking system” that can utilize a pool of frequencies that will allow radios to automatically change to other tower sites as police officers, firefighters and medics travel to different locations in the county.

Mike Corcoran, who is with Capital Area Corporation, said the state implemented a similar P-25 system through Motorola about a decade ago, so he is familiar with the technology’s capabilities. He likened the new system to a bank where tellers can take any customer waiting in line rather than having specific lanes just for police, fire and EMS like the current system operates.

“You’re just stepping on each other. You don’t have enough resources,” Corcoran said of the current configuration. “There’s priorities and queues. The (local) dog catcher is low priority. All you guys here are high priority.”

He said there will be a nearly limitless amount of channels for first responders to be able to communicate with each other while an overarching “control channel” is available to help coordinate in a major emergency that requires a massive response.

“This is duplicated at every (tower) site. That’s how you get such wide coverage,” Corcoran said. “If you’re in the southern end (of the county), you can talk to someone in the northern end. You can’t do that today.”

Some first responders who operate near the county line and must coordinate mutual aid with departments in neighboring counties or states asked how their radios would interface with those other agencies if they’re not on the same P-25 system. The panel of speakers suggested getting dual band radios or entering into a cooperation agreement with other counties to be able to hook into their radio platform if they have identical systems.

Other emergency responders raised questions about the cost to purchase equipment, which is mostly covered in the original Motorola radio contract that was paid using federal American Rescue Plan Act money left over from the Biden Administration. The initial investment will include 113 “base” radios for each department’s headquarters, along with 561 mobile units and another 1,166 portable units for vehicles.

“All of the portables (and) mobile units are covered by the county (contract) at no cost to you,” Sherman said. “Everything we’ve discussed thus far is covered.”

West Alexander Fire Chief Eric Graham, who is a member of the county’s “land mobile radio” subcommittee that is helping to roll out the project, said the “Equitable Allocation & Distribution Plan” will ensure that every department gets the correct number of radios for their vehicles and personnel. But he asked departments to be responsive with the county about “what their need is” so they can get enough radios or work through the process to purchase additional ones later at a discounted rate.

The meeting took a little over an hour and appeared to be well-received by the dozens of first responders who packed into the one of the fairgrounds building to listen to the presentation.

“This is an opportunity for us to communicate,” Sherman told the group gathered for the session. “This is your system. We want to work with each one of you. When this is over, we want to have the best radio system possible.”

The slideshow presentation from Tuesday night’s meeting will be made available on the county’s website at www.washingtoncopa.gov.