BOARDMAN — The Austintown-Boardman-Mahoning County Council of Governments will move ahead with plans to join a new statewide communications network for emergency radio service.

On Tuesday morning, representatives from all three governments — with authorization from the Mahoning County Commissioners and Austintown and Boardman township boards of trustees — voted unanimously to move to the Multi-Agency Radio Communication System, known as MARCS. The move will cost $1.3 million.

“We’re transitioning from a very good radio system that has served our communities well since 2012,” said Boardman police Chief Todd Werth. “The current costs of maintaining that standalone system became greater than it will cost to make the move to MARCS. So now we’re going to another very good radio system that eventually will save all our communities money.”

Werth, who is also chair of the COG board, said the original cost when they approached MARCS two years ago was nearly $6 million.

“We’ve done our due diligence because we wanted to have all the information available, and that’s why it took us so long,” he said. “They were willing to work with us, and eliminate some of those costs, so now we’re at a point where it’s financially feasible to make this transition.”

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 will 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.

Fire and police officials involved in the transition process have lauded the MARCS system for its interoperability, something they said was lacking under the current system, and which caused problems at major multi-agency emergencies, like the East Palestine train derailment, the Realty Tower explosion in downtown Youngstown, and even at large structure fires that require departments to call for mutual aid.

The state will take over the maintenance costs of all towers and software through Motorola once the transition is complete. Austintown and Boardman still will be responsible for the costs of their dispatch consoles, at approximately $120,000 each, but the Mahoning County Commissioners have agreed to offset that cost.

Under the COG, console and software maintenance costs have been passed on to the COG’s clients across the county through radio usage fees. The COG serves Canfield city police and the Cardinal Joint Fire District (which covers the city and township), 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.

Werth said that while the cost per radio will drop to $5 once the transition to MARCS is complete, it will remain at about $18 for the 12 or so months until that happens.

He also said that after an inventory of the 2,000-plus radios used by COG clients, Motorola found that about 300 will not be supported by the MARCS system, and the communities using those radios will incur the cost of replacing them. The radio systems, both portable (handheld) and mobile (installed in vehicles) cost between $4,000 and $5,000. Werth said the cost to reprogram the radios to transition to the MARCS system — about $300 each — will be built into the replacement costs.

BearCom, which handles maintenance locally for Motorola hardware and software, said they have leasing options and other ways to help offset some of those replacement costs. Wertz said Motorola and BearCom made accommodations for some software upgrades that allowed 600 additional radios to be transferable to the MARCS system.

Each community will have an individual agreement with MARCS to deal with adding radios or dropping radios from the system as needed.

The current 800-hz radio system has to stay up and running while the transition progresses. That transition process requires the COG to make upgrades to towers in Boardman, Austintown and at YSU.

A hardened building — constructed to withstand extreme weather — at the base of the Boardman tower will have to be replaced at a cost of about $250,000, Werth said. And improvements to the grounding system and other structural upgrades to the towers may cost as much as $75,000 each. Any repairs and upgrades after the transition is complete will be handled by the state.