DISCUSSION: STARK COUNTY LACKS THE ABILITY TO EFFECTIVELY DEAL WITH WIRELESS 9-1-1 CALLS?

Probably more than 70% of all calls to the centralized Stark County call receiving unit (NOTE: I DO NOT SAY "CENTRALIZED DISPATCH" - no such thing exists in Stark County) is made via cellphone.

Because of Stark County's fragmented, hodgepodge 9-1-1 system (can we really call it a system?), wireless callers run a huge risk of receiving delayed attention to their emergency calls.

Every Stark County citizen should be grabbing a copy of the "Stark County Regional 9-1-1, Dispatch Study, and Recommendations Report".

Read it for yourself. Your life or the life if a loved one could be at stake.

For wireless callers now (under the current wildly deficient county system), a cellphone call will only tell the receiving 9-1-1 receiving center the location of the "cell tower" which processed the call and the sending cellphone number. Needless to say, the emergency is very unlikely to be right under or next to the cell tower processing the call.

Projections are that if everything falls into place, Stark County could have a "modernized" system within two (2) years or so.

But, the STARK COUNTY POLITICAL REPORT is not optimistic that Stark County will come anywhere near perfecting a county wide system anytime soon.

Given the political realities with police chiefs, fire chiefs, EMS chiefs, township and village officials and the city of Alliance officials resisting change; UNLESS THERE IS A PUBLIC OUTCRY AND THE APPLICATION OF POLITICAL PRESSURE ON THE "RESISTERS," it will be a long time before the Stark County 9-1-1 gets fixed.

The question: How long will we Stark Countians allow local officials to frustrate remedying this glaring problem that is very solvable if we can get locals off of their square inch?