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Supervisors lock rates for 911 system financing

Benson

The Marshall County Board of Supervisors locked in financing rates for the emergency communications system upgrade during a special Tuesday meeting.

Auditor Nan Benson said the $4.6 million general obligation bonds through Northland Securities rate is locked at 0.95.

“That is a good rate,” she said. “We were nervous because the rates were not locked, but now they are. It is secured and we got what we wanted.”

Benson said the next step is now getting the necessary money, which she expects will happen at the next regular meeting on March 2.

“That will be the one final step,” she said.

Meetings between the county and RACOM officials are being held but without a quorum of elected officials. She said she met with RACOM last week to get more information on getting the project kicked off.

“There is no set timeline yet,” Benson said. “We need to acquire the land. We are thinking it might be June of 2022. The first thing we definitely need to do is get the land. It was a good meeting last week and we got a lot of information. It made a lot more sense.”

Discussions regarding the failing emergency communication system have been ongoing in Marshall County since December 2019. Supervisors heard about the problems such as emergency calls being lost, inability to hear speakers. However, the financing was not immediately available. Since then, they have spent numerous meetings discussing the need to update the system and figuring out how to pay for it.

The county will upgrade the failing system for $4.6 million and decided to loan departments the money for purchases of necessary equipment such as radios and pagers. It is estimated for the project to take anywhere from 12 to 18 months.

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Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.

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