New Philadelphia, Ohio Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s officials say they are continuing progress towards bringing the new county 911 system online. 

Communications Manager Ryan Lawrence says he’s been waiting to hear back on estimates for supplies after Motorola found their tower in Gilmore did not meet engineering requirements. He says the plan now is to reinforce that tower, bringing it up to code and allowing them to attach the new system.

“We’ve been waiting for a while. What I’ve been told is we’re waiting for the cost of steel to come back,” he says. “We finally received a quote from them on Friday, and we are going to meet with them hopefully this week to really go over the quote, get a good plan of action together so we can keep moving forward.”

Lawrence says they will now work with Motorola to figure out how the tower can be strengthened. 

“What they’ve been trying to do is figure out what needs added to the tower in order to allow it to pass the structural analysis,” he says. “That means like adding steel to certain parts and replacing the guidewires.”

Lawrence says each of their towers was run through a computer model stress test, only finding issues in the Gilmore tower.

“All of our other towers passed, and this one is just built a little different. It’s a little different tower. It’s one of the older ones, but it is a sound tower,” he says. “We’ve had many talks with Staley Tech, and they have complete faith in that tower. It’s just that throughout the years, the specs of towers have changed.”  

Lawrence says in the meantime, they’ve managed to swap out all the radios for fire and EMS, as well as equipment inside the 911 center. 

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