Sauk County fast tracks $1.2M radio upgrade spending

The county initially planned to use money from the federal pandemic relief package to purchase the equipment starting this year and going through 2024. While the budget amendment now lets the county immediately buy the equipment, Communications Engineer Phil Raab said delays mean it will likely still take years to fully update radios in squad vehicles and portable devices carried by law enforcement.

“There’s a lot of backlog in everything we’re ordering, and that’s one reason we’d like to get them all this year as well, because there’s additional increases the manufacturer has been telling us are going to happen.” Raab said. “We could be sitting here several years out before we see anything. At least we’d get our equipment order in and as we get those radios in, we can have those installed.”

Raab said currently the county has had an order in for three months and items are “slowly coming in,” but they are expecting up to another 12 weeks before more items arrive.

Part of the reason for the shift in urgency is due to a change at the state level that requires officers with the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office be able to communicate with State Patrol troopers. That caused the price to go up as well.

Upon questioning from Sup. Bill Stehling over whether the radios being replaced have any monetary value, Raab said the change was not due to the equipment becoming faulty.

“They’re still functioning, it’s just that we can’t get them supported by the manufacturer,” Raab said.

He said the county could sell the equipment at auction or they could be taken by municipalities within the county that need newer radios. The upgrades are limited to the radios used by deputies and there would be no changes in the dispatch equipment, Sheriff Chip Meister said Wednesday.

While radios are generally upgraded with new vehicles, having the equipment readily available allows workers to install upgrades in existing squad cars as well. Raab said he had worried over equipment sitting unused for an undetermined amount of time, but the county was provided a three year warranty to avoid expiration of a shorter one before the equipment can be installed and tested.

Supervisors approved the budget amendment unanimously, with Sup. Joel Chrisler voting remotely. Sups. John Deitrich, Brandon Lohr and Carl Gruber were absent.

Sup. Mike Flint said the county had always planned to cover upgrade costs with ARPA funding over three years and with the budget amendment, they were just using the funds earlier than planned.

“This is a good opportunity to get better equipment in quicker,” Flint said.