Public safety officers pager system approved with expected cost savings

By Kevin Boneske

Staff Writer

ASHWAUBENON – The village board has approved a change to the Public Safety Department officer’s paging system projected to save $6,580 by the end of 2022.

Board members acted on the change at their meeting Tuesday, July 23, when they heard from acting chief Tom Rolling.

He described the pager system the department has been using through American Messaging as a “dinosaur at the wayside.”

“The company that we have… charges us $3,200 a year just for that service,” Rolling said. “The problem is that if these pagers drop, break, quit working, we have to turn them back in at the cost of $50 a pager, and that continues, then, to add to what we’re budgeting each year for our officers to be called in on an emergency, which is the reason for these pagers.”

Rolling said the new pager system known as Ten-33 sends web-based texting to each officer’s phone.

“Sometimes you go out, you forget your pager, but you never forget your phone,” he said. “So with this, we’re looking at a cost savings of, for this year especially, $940, if we implement, and for the next three years, we’re looking up to approximately $6,500 (of cumulative savings), and that’s just for the service that we have.”

Rolling said it has cost the department around another $200 annually to replace pagers with the system through American Messaging.

“We’ve got a system that we’re paying, we think, way too much money for when everyone has their cell phones,” he said.

Rolling said he believes the Ten-33 system will be timelier for calling officers in to assist the department when someone would have a phone and not necessarily a pager when away from home.

Trustee Chris Zirbel said implementing the Ten-33 paging system would be a “no-brainer… financially and otherwise.”

Rolling said the Ten-33 system has been in use in Kewaunee County for several years with no issues, and an update of the system is now being implemented.