County receives one bid on new emergency radio system

Crawford County only received one bid for a new countywide emergency radio system.

The lone bid received by Wednesday's deadline submitted was from JVCKenwood/E.F. Johnson Co. of Irving, Texas, with a bid of $16.875 million.

The bid now is being reviewed by MCM Consulting Group Inc. of State College, the county's communication consultant.

The county hired MCM Consulting Group back in January as an adviser to the county on what may be needed to meet Project 25 (P25) compliance.

Preliminary estimates of the county's move to P25 standard may cost between $15 million to $20 million due to hundreds of emergency radios among the fire, ambulance and local law enforcement agencies at their bases, in vehicles and for personnel.

A partnership between the public safety communications community, standard development organizations and industry manufacturers, P25 will be a new digital communications system standard.

P25 standards are for interoperability of different components of different land mobile radio systems to connect to communicate.

The goal is to allow all emergency radio equipment to communicate both across agencies and jurisdictions, no matter who manufactured it.