Joint Communciations will soon move into new 911 facility

After nearly a year and a half, the construction company building the new Boone County emergency communications facility is close to handing over the keys to the county.

“We’ve been in weekly to review progress and the next steps, so at this point you get to see how the building is evolving,” said Chad Martin, director of Joint Communications.

A voter-approved 3/8-cent sales tax passed in 2013 is paying for the $12.8 million facility.

Little Dixie Construction is expected to be finished with construction by early June, but Boone County still has a lot of work to do before it can operate out of the facility.

“A lot of technology that’s Boone County’s responsibility to put in. Boone County IT, Boone County 911, Boone County Emergency Management will work together to get the rest of technologies installed in the building,” Martin said.

The new building will allow Joint Communications staff to move out of the cramped office they’re currently in and enable management to hire more employees to take emergency calls.

“Long term issues with being able to handle the number of 911 calls coming in with the amount of personnel we have. So, day one we won’t have them, but we’ll work out a plan to get up to that staffing level and then we’ll apply additional call takers to those 911 calls that are coming in,” Martin said.

Joint Communications officials said it’s unclear when they’ll be operating full time out of the new facility.