BOARDMAN — A local council will propose that most Mahoning County communities switch to a statewide communications system for emergency first responders.

Leaders of the ABM Council of Governments, representing Austintown and Boardman townships and Mahoning County, agreed Tuesday that they will propose to their respective governing bodies a plan to abandon the council’s independent first-response communication system in favor of the Multi-Agency Radio Communication System, commonly known as MARCS.

The issue has been under discussion for months and included multiple meetings with Motorola, which operates the towers and provides software support for the system.

“The reason this process has taken so long is because of the diligence by the board to make sure there are no hidden costs,” said Boardman police Chief Todd Werth.

MARCS is a state-sponsored system that allows emergency responders from different agencies to communicate directly through their radios, instead of funneling communications through multiple dispatch centers, which costs time in an emergency.

MARCS would allow local law enforcement, for example, to tie into the MARCS system anywhere in Ohio, easing communications with local and regional agencies in the case of prisoner transfers to and from out-of-county facilities.

The fee to join MARCS is $1.3 million to $1.4 million, but it’s not the only cost. While the state would take over the maintenance of the towers, the county has to have the proper system in place to support MARCS.

The council will need to upgrade its software assistance plan for its dispatch consoles..

Representatives from Motorola said Mahoning County operates on Motorola’s Essential-Plus plan. To upgrade to support the MARCS system, the county will have to purchase an Advanced Plus plan.

Another concern is how many local departments’ mobile radios will be able to make the switch.

Whether the council stayed with its own system — at a cost of $324,835 per year — or transfer to MARCS, which would drop the console and radio costs to $135,000 per year, the cost is passed on to the council’s users in monthly fees per radio in use.

The 2026 cost to Austintown, Boardman and Mahoning County under the current plan is $18.20 per radio and would go up to $19.12 per radio in 2026. That cost would go up to $19.88 in 2027 and $20.68 in 2028.

Steve Sinn, dispatch director for Austintown, said that under MARCS, the cost will only have to cover consoles in dispatch centers, because the state would assume maintenance of the towers, and the cost per radio per month would drop to $5 for users in the ABM network.

Chief Deputy William Cappabianca said there is a tentative agreement that the county will cover the console costs for Austintown and Boardman, but that does not cover the other users in the system who are served by dispatch centers with their own software contracts through Motorola.

The Council of Governments serves Canfield city police and fire, Craig Beach police and fire, Ellsworth Fire Department, Goshen Township, North Jackson, Lowellville, Mahoning County Task Forces, Mill Creek MetroParks, Beaver Township, Campbell, Coitsville, Lake Milton, New Middletown, Poland Township and Poland Village police, Springfield police and fire, Struthers, Washingtonville, Poland’s Western Reserve Joint Fire District, Youngstown and Youngstown State University.

Cappabianca said Canfield, Youngstown, Campbell and Struthers all have their own dispatch centers and will have separate contracts with Motorola, an added cost on top of the $5 monthly radio fees tied into the Council’s system.

Many of those communities also may have radios that are no longer compatible when the Council makes the move to MARCS.

Boardman, for example, Werth said, has at least 50 radios that will need to be replaced. The council has not been able to identify that number for every community yet, and Werth and Cappabianca said there is a clause in the resolution that allows for the Austintown and Boardman boards of trustees and Mahoning County Commissioners to reject the move to MARCS if the cost of radio replacement is found to be prohibitive for the council and its users.

Officials at Tuesday’s meeting included Green Township fire Chief Todd Baird, who said the county has at least three separate radio networks that are not all compatible — MARCS, the Council of Governments system, and an old VHF system. That means first responders at a large fire or other emergency cannot just switch their radios to one channel and communicate freely.

Baird said a recent fire in Ellsworth left firefighters from different districts using hand signals to try to pass information along quickly at a distance.

With many communities and local agencies joining the recently formed Incident Management Assist Team (IMAT) — formed to facilitate smooth management of small- and large-scale emergencies in the county — Baird said a uniform communications network is vital.

“We need this initiative to pass so we can actually get on with developing these other types of emergency management efforts,” he said.