City Council, School Board act to improve communications

A purchase approved by the Lebanon City Council and Lebanon R-3 School Board this week is designed to improve emergency communications between the city, police, fire and sheriff’s departments. Jarrad Schomaker, the City of Lebanon’s IT director, said the police department and fire department currently do not have any way to communicate with the schools because of the buildings’ thick walls and metal roofs. “After researching SMART Connect and working with the IT staff at the school district, we determined our best course of action would be to program the radios with the closed wireless network. After testing and evaluating the stability and reliability, the radios performed as indicated by Motorola,” he said in a written addendum to the City Council agenda. For more on this story, see the LCR.