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In the past year, three municipalities in the region have purchased the CodeRED emergency notification system, while another is giving the move serious consideration.
The Campbell Town Board will get a demonstration and more information at its 7 p.m. meeting today as it looks at paying up to $7,500 a year for the service.
“The board is just gathering information,” Campbell Administrator Travis Parish said. “Our fire chief presented a little bit of information at the last meeting, and he’ll give us a lot more information.”
The town board began looking at CodeRED when the city of Onalaska, Wis., contracted for the service in November, Parish said.
After the June floods, Houston and Winona counties in Minnesota decided to purchase the service to help with future emergency notification of residents.
CodeRED is among a number of automated alert systems that can send a pre-recorded message to all or part of a community.
La Crosse County has looked into the service but decided it was too expensive, said Keith Butler, the county’s emergency services coordinator.
“We were told it would be at least $50,000 (per year) and determined there is no way we could budget for that,” Butler said. “So we just dropped the idea.”
The county may look at the service again, Butler said, if more local municipalities get on board because that would lower the cost to the county.
La Crosse officials said the city has had access to a group warning service for almost 12 years, but it’s seldom used.
The city used grant money in 1996 to began the City Watch program, and a major upgrade in 2007 took the system from a locally maintained phone database to a Web-based program, according to the La Crosse Police Department.
About that time, the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse joined the system with a separate program, and the city is negotiating with Viterbo University to make it available to notify students and staff there, said La Crosse police Capt. Rob Abraham.
While UW-L’s program can send a text message or e-mail to students and staff, the city is limited to just land line phones, Abraham said.
“Cell numbers aren’t included in the database we get from the local phone companies,” Abraham said. “But we hope to have a system where someone can go to a Web site and enter their information if they wish.”
If Viterbo joins the service, Abraham said, it would cost each entity about $3,000 a year.
Dan Springer can be reached at (608) 791-8269 or at dspringer@lacrossetribune.com.
