(St. Clair County) – Firefighters in St. Clair County will be getting a new way to talk to each other in 2017. The St. Clair County Board of Commissioners recently approved a plan to switch over to an 800 megahertz fire paging system. The new pagers would use the county’s existing 800 MHz dispatch infrastructure.
The estimated cost of purchasing pagers, in a bulk order from Digicom Global in Troy, is just over $300,000 according to fire officials. The county has $100,000 to use toward the project and the St. Clair County Fire Chiefs Association has another $75,000 in the form of a Homeland Security Department Urban Areas Security Initiative grant.
The estimated cost per pager to the county’s 17 fire departments would be between $250 to $350, depending on the model of pager ordered. The county also will allow departments that are unable to pay the full upfront cost to pay their share over a three-year period.
