County to buy emergency phone notification system

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

— Benton County will have an emergency telephone notification system before the spring storm season starts this year, County Judge Dave Bisbee said Friday.

Bisbee chose to announce the county’s decision to purchase a system with Cooper Notifications during his town hall meeting in Bella Vista on Friday because the city was just one area in that could benefit from having it, he said.

“Even though there was some upset over it, they (the Quorum Court) really took their time with it to get (the purchase) right,” Bisbee said.

In May, Bisbee chose to redirect grant money the Quorum Court approved for a telephone notification system to purchase cameras for the County Administration Building and courthouse.

“It was just another one of those political things I did not handle wisely,” Bisbee said.

Bisbee said he chose to install camerasin the County Administration Building over purchasing a telephone notification system because of the liability associated with the telephone notification system the county was looking at purchasing at that time.

“The biggest problem with the liability was the county had to give up its sovereign immunity to get a database (of residents’ phone numbers),” Bisbee said.

Cooper Notifications provides its own database of phone numbers, one of the three requirements of a system the county wanted, Bisbee said.

The other two requirements are the alerts are sent out automatically during any life-threatening situation, including severe weather, and residents are allowed to opt out of the system, Bisbee said.

Having a telephone notification system “will have a huge benefit for Benton County in both the ability to notify the citizens of Benton County and in communicating with the different first responders,” Jay Burchfield, business development and regional manager with Cooper Notifications said.

Community, Pages 6 on 01/27/2010