Graphic courtesy of Botetourt Co.
By Matt de Simone
The Botetourt County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 during a specially called meeting on Dec. 29 to approve a change order for the county’s Emergency Communications System Project, advancing a long-planned effort to modernize radio communications for public safety agencies.
The board approved Option 3 of the proposed change order, which county officials said in a recent press release will provide improved system reliability, expanded coverage, and stronger interoperability among local and state public safety partners.
Emergency Communications Manager Matt Hinkle described the change as “imperative,” noting that approving the change order before the new year would save the county approximately $650,000. More importantly, he said, the decision keeps the project on schedule.
“The schedule that we have currently with the vendor has us (the county) doing coverage testing up until the last two weeks of September,” Hinkle explained to the board. He noted that coverage testing must be conducted while trees still have foliage. “If we waited another four weeks/30 days, that could put us out of that window. It’s going to be tough to get there anyway, but, if we miss that window, we can’t start testing again until May of 2027.”
Given the age of the county’s current communications system, officials said denying the change order would have posed significant risk. During public comment, a Buchanan resident warned that if the existing system were to fail, the county would be left relying on “two cans and a string” for communication between first responders and residents.
County leaders have stated that the need to upgrade the emergency communications system has existed for more than a decade. Aging infrastructure and ongoing coverage limitations have increasingly affected law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services, particularly during emergency situations.
Hinkle presented four change order options to the board, each offering different approaches to improving coverage, reliability, and interoperability. All four options would have provided updated radio technology for county law enforcement and fire and EMS agencies. The upgraded system will also allow school system personnel to communicate during emergency situations, improving coordination and safety across agencies.
One of the primary reasons for selecting Option 3 was its ability to address a long-standing coverage gap in the Arcadia area of northeastern Botetourt County. Previous options provided limited service in that region. Option 3 allows the county to leverage existing Virginia State Police communications infrastructure to improve coverage in Arcadia and enables direct communication between county responders and state police during coordinated incidents. Hinkle noted that this is not a “net new ask” for additional funding.
During public comment, a Wirtz resident questioned references to fiber-optic infrastructure appearing in the project’s engineering documents, asserting that additional fiber could resemble infrastructure used by industrial data centers and broadband carriers. Hinkle addressed the concern during his presentation.
“We (the county) are not building any fiber,” Hinkle said. “Most of the back haul will be 168 megs (megabits/Mbps), 6 gigahertz (GHz) microwave that will be connecting the sites…. There is no fiber in this particular build out. I just wanted to make that clear.”
Hinkle noted that the county is leasing a single 100 Mbps fiber connection between the Purgatory Mountain and Boxley Valley sites, which existed prior to the project.
To reduce construction costs, the county will install a mission-critical private microwave system to handle data backhaul between tower sites rather than constructing an extensive fiber network. The wireless system will be used exclusively by county public safety entities. The only fiber involved in the project is the leased 100-megabit-per-second point-to-point connection between the Purgatory Mountain and Boxley sites.
The project includes seven proposed tower locations designed to distribute signal coverage throughout the county, with improved service in the Arcadia area expected once the Virginia State Police infrastructure is fully integrated.
The approved change order carries a cost of $2,734,265, bringing the total contract cost for the Emergency Communications System Project to $23,507,095. A portion of the funding will come through the county’s capital improvement planning process, helping to reduce impacts on future budgets.
From a funding standpoint, Hinkle added that while the county previously discussed using tax-free bonds for the project, to his knowledge no federal or state grant applications have been submitted. The project will be funded through a combination of reserve funds and bond proceeds.
Blue Ridge Supervisor Walter Michael asked whether any fiber installed during the county’s grant-funded broadband expansion project would be used in the communications system. Hinkle said it would not be used beyond the existing link between Purgatory and Boxley. Michael also questioned whether the new communications system would benefit the proposed Google data center at the Greenfield industrial center.
Hinkle said the two projects are “mutually exclusive” and stated that he does not believe the communications system would benefit the proposed data center. He emphasized that no new infrastructure is being built for use by Google or any other third party, and that the county is not paying for anything that would benefit a private entity. He added that while the county is co-locating on towers built by third parties, it “does not control what [third parties] do.”
County officials emphasized that the investment will strengthen public safety operations, improve emergency response capabilities, and ensure more reliable communications countywide— particularly in areas that have historically experienced limited service.
