The Cape Girardeau County Commission agreed Thursday to fund half of the equipment expenses for a combined 911 emergency dispatch center with the city of Jackson, contingent on whether the Jackson Board of Aldermen agrees to pay the other half.

Jackson and the county currently operate separate 911 dispatch centers using obsolete equipment, installed more than 20 years ago, for which replacement parts are difficult or impossible to find.

"We were down to buying parts for radio equipment off of eBay," said county commissioner Charlie Herbst.

The cost of the new equipment -- including an eight-station emergency dispatch console, new antennas and tower equipment, repeaters and radios -- is $1,028,443.79. The county's share, pending a cost-sharing agreement by Jackson city officials, will be approximately $514,000. It has not yet been determined whether the equipment will be purchased or leased.

Barring delays, the new equipment is expected to be operational by the end of the year.

"The Jackson aldermen will be discussing this next week at their study session," Herbst said. "Jim Roach, the (Jackson) city administrator, has verbally confirmed that Jackson will split the cost of this project with us, paying 50%, so that's a significant savings for us and for the city of Jackson both."

The commission's approval of the equipment acquisition "allows us to move ahead and allows Jackson to determine if they want to move ahead as well and they've given us indications they're all in at this point," said commissioner Paul Koeper.

The Jackson Board of Aldermen study session is scheduled for Monday night.

Herbst said work on the dispatch center consolidation project started about two years ago. The combined facility will be in a 2,000-square foot area of the Cape County Sheriff's Department.

"Jackson approached us when they were thinking about building a new police department and not spending the money duplicating a dispatch center and consolidating a dispatch center with the county instead," he said. "As of today the furniture for the dispatch center is being installed. The next phase of the project will be the actual radio equipment for that room."

According to Cape Girardeau County Sheriff Ruth Ann Dickerson, the equipment upgrade will allow the county to join the state's MOSWIN (Missouri Statewide Interoperability Network) communications system. MOSWIN, she explained, was developed by the state following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and enhances the ability of law enforcement agencies across the state to communicate with each other.

"None of our equipment in the county was capable of joining the system so it was a direction we definitely we wanted to move toward," she said. "The Missouri Highway Patrol has taken the leadership in developing the system around the state of Missouri and it gives us the capability to talk throughout the state to others on the MOSWIN system."

Jackson has had access to the MOSWIN about two years ago. "But they were using some temporary equipment," Herbst said. "They needed to purchase all that radio equipment, too, so that's when it came together and Jackson said 'Let's go together on this'."

Although the Jackson and Cape Girardeau County 911 dispatch centers have been in separate locations, Dickerson said they have been operating as a "virtual" dispatch system, along with the dispatch center in Cape Girardeau, for many years.

"What that means is even though we each have had our own buildings and own dispatch rooms, we all worked diligently through the years to stay on the same CAD (computer aided dispatch) system, we're are all on the same 911 system and we have worked diligently to get on the same page on our records management systems so we have sharability of information," she said. "So we've been virtually combined."