OKANOGAN – The Okanogan County Commissioners will hold a public hearing on Tuesday, July 9 at 3:30 p.m. with the intent of authorizing the Emergency Communications Sales Tax (.2 percent) on the November 2019 ballot for voter approval.

• Okanogan County’s existing Emergency Communications infrastructure is in desperate need of improvements. The current infrastructure went out of production in 2011, is at end of life and vendor maintenance is expiring.
• Current Okanogan County infrastructure only has capacity for one channel for all fire, EMS and law enforcement first responders to share and attempt to coordinate their response.
• Current infrastructure is inefficient and ineffective during day-to-day operations, and completely inadequate during the disaster events that we have experience.