BOARDMAN — Mahoning County is considering a partnership with the Multi-Agency Radio Communication System, a state-sponsored communications system for first responders.

Angela Canepa, deputy director of communications for MARCS, made a presentation Monday morning at the Boardman Township Government Center to the Austintown-Boardman-Canfield Joint Communications District, law enforcement and local officials.

“(MARCS) is a multi-agency radio communications system,” Canepa explained. “It is a state\wide system started more than two decades ago.”

MARCS’s mission is to provide “interoperability to all first responder agencies,” she said, meaning that during a crisis situation, first responders from one agency can talk directly over the radio to first responders from another agency.

Efforts to form a centralized communication system in Ohio began after the Shadyside flood of 1990 and the Lucasville prison riot of 1993. During these crises, first responders were often left in a state of chaos because they were unable to talk directly to one another, Canepa said. Messages among agencies first had to be radioed in from the field to dispatch centers. The dispatchers would then have to relay messages to dispatchers in cooperating agencies who then would have to relay those communications back to their own responders in the field.

These same problems with radio communication dogged first responders during the train derailment in East Palestine in February 2023 and the gang violence at the Canfield Fair in September of 2023.

The MARCS system is designed to alleviate such confusion, Canepa said.

“In one of the most unfortunate ways possible, we learned during the East Palestine derailment how invaluable it is for local first responders to be able to communicate with one another and respond to a mass emergency,” state Rep. Lauren McNally, D-Youngstown, told The Vindicator last year. “This is a smart investment that will keep our residents and our safety forces safe.”

Already, the Ohio State Highway Patrol uses MARCS, and local law enforcement is able to “patch in” to the MARCS system if necessary. The Mahoning County Commissioners Office is in the process of examining the system, as well as alternatives.

“This (discussion) is still completely exploratory,” Boardman police Chief Todd Werth said via email. The county is “looking at all options to include continuing with our current 800 digital system currently in use, not just a possible transition to the state MARCS system,” he wrote. “(The meeting on Monday) was an informational session for the elected officials from Mahoning County, Austintown and Boardman who oversee the current council of governments (COG) for the radio system. No final decision has been made and no vote is scheduled at this time.”

Seventy-three of Ohio’s 88 counties have joined the MARCS system, and four additional counties are in talks with the state to join in the near future. This means that 158,000 individual users and 3,300 agencies are already part of the system, according to Canepa’s presentation.

Counties that join the MARCS system are expected to pay approximately half of the cost of operations, but this would actually translate to savings. The monthly subscription for using an individual radio would drop from $18 to $5 in the MARCS system, according to Werth and Canepa. In addition, the state would take over all maintenance, repair, landscaping and upgrading of the county’s four radio towers if it partnered with MARCS.

Hospitals and private users, such as ambulance services, would pay $25 a month to use MARCS. In all, the state would contribute $2 million to a partnership with Mahoning County, according to Canepa’s presentation.

Mahoning County has 1,700 radios that would need to be reprogrammed at the county’s expense. And in some instances, if radios need to be upgraded to join the network, Mahoning County would have to buy new radios and new computer consoles for their dispatch centers, also at their own expense, Canepa said.

Some in the audience worried that the $5 monthly cost for radio usage would go up over time. “There is no reason to think (the cost) will go up,” Canepa said. “I can’t promise that this stays $5 forever, but I can tell you that the trend (in the cost of radio service) has been down, and it has never gone up when it goes down,” she said.

By the time it is completed, MARCS will be the biggest statewide system in the nation. While the discussion is still ongoing, audience responses to the project were generally positive.

“When you have first responders in the room who want this,” Canepa said, “that says a lot to me.”

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