Apr 17, 2024 By Mike Jones 3 min read

Washington County is planning to terminate its contract with MRA Inc. a little more than a year after approving the agreement with the North Strabane-based company to upgrade the countywide 911 emergency radio system.

“After a long, arduous, expensive process, we are back to the drawing board,” Washington County Commission Chairman Nick Sherman said.

A motion was placed on the agenda during the commissioners’ workshop meeting Tuesday with the expectation that the board will dissolve the contract agreement during its voting meeting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. After 30 days, county officials plan to advertise for new bids in order to review the submissions and select a new vendor to perform the work to build out the emergency radio system.

“I’m going to move on this,” Sherman said.

The $22.545 million contract with MRA was approved by a 2-1 vote at the county’s March 2023 meeting with Commissioners Diana Irey Vaughan and Larry Maggi voting in favor while Sherman dissented. Numerous first responders attended the meeting – including several on the county’s public safety advisory committee that reviewed the bids – and raised concerns about MRA’s capabilities while saying they preferred the radio system included in a competing bid from Motorola.

Irey Vaughan retired from the board when her term expired this January and was replaced by Commissioner Electra Janis, who is expected to side with Sherman on the issue.

“I had heartburn in the past because we looked at the company … and we looked at the process and procedure about how they would put it in place,” Sherman said.

He estimates that the county has already spent about $6 million using federal American Rescue Plan Act stimulus money after the contract was formally authorized in August.

“I’ve been very critical about this from the very beginning,” Sherman said. “Tax dollars were spent – a lot of them – and we still don’t have answers to questions we had a year-and-half ago.”

Sherman declined to comment on whether he thinks the decision to terminate will lead to a lawsuit, but he pointed to a subsequent study that county officials commissioned in January in which they hired an independent communications consultant from New Jersey to review the contract. He said the report issued by tech consultant V-COMM came back as “unfounded” since MRA apparently did not respond to the company’s questions.

“MRA had every option and opportunity to provide (V-COMM) with information,” Sherman said, adding MRA can submit another bid in this next round.

A phone call to MRA’s headquarters on Route 19 was not returned Tuesday afternoon.

A subsequent motion that will be voted on at Thursday night’s meeting will also pay $200,000 to Mission Critical to work as a consultant alongside the public safety advisory committee to review future bids for the radio system after they are submitted. Mission Critical served in a similar capacity during the initial bidding process, and was asked by the commissioners last year to perform a detailed study on MRA’s capabilities, which questioned the feasibility of its radio system.