Today paid off for the City of Howe’s investment into the CodeRED program. Citizens who had signed up for the free service were alerted via text, email or by phone if they had signed up for the alert system. With Howe not currently having a siren for storm activity such as today, the CodeRED system is crucial and the city has asked the citizens to sign up for the service.
Five years ago, Grayson County contacted all of the local mayors of each city and asked if they’d be interested in partnering as a group for emergency management by using CodeRED. At that time, Sherman, Denison and Howe were the only cities in the county using the system. With all of the cities councils passing the agreement, Grayon County took over the contract with CodeRed. Grayson County was able to negotiate a better rate for the entire county than what the three initial cities were paying individually.
Since that time, the county has even added the CodeRED Weather Warning as a bonus feature. Mayor Jeff Stanley estimated that the city was paying $2,500 to $3,000 annually prior to the partnership with Grayson County.
Grayson County paid for the entire first year of service by using a Homeland Security Grant and have been able to use that grant annually to provide this service for cities. However, each city now had to start paying for the service starting October 1, 2014. The cost of the service is $1,193.86.
Changes were made in the September city council meeting regarding the minutes that are available in the CodeRED program. Much like a cellphone plan, if the county exceeded the amount of alerts used, it would cost extra. Therefore, The City of Howe has not sent out any non-emergency alerts. These alerts are sent out if, in example, today’s tornado warnings or severe weather warnings or even in cases where the water supply is shutoff in a certain area. Another alert would be sent out to update the citizens on the progress of the situations that might occur.
The council had the option for the city (and every other city in the county) to pay an additional $170 per month to have unlimited alerts. With the agreement from each city, Grayson County foot the bill for the first year. The total for this first year of service with the additional alerts is $8,000.
With this service also comes a user fee of $100 per user. With the size of Howe, one user fee is ample for the process.
Citizens are encouraged to sign up for CodeRED at the city website at cityofhowe.org. The city pays roughly $0.40 per citizen to be able to mass broadcast events such as weather alerts, drinking water contamination, utility outage, evacuation notice and route, missing person, fires or floods, bomb threat, hostage situation, chemical spill or gas leak, and other emergency incidents where rapid and accurate notification is essential for life safety.
