Washington County officials plan to negotiate a multimillion-dollar contract with Motorola to install a new emergency radio system for first responders, but details on the cost and scope of the work have not been released.

County commissioners are expected to vote on the contract with Chicago-based Motorola Solutions Inc. during their regular meeting Thursday morning, which appears to depend on final negotiations during a meeting with the telecommunications company today.

“We know the 14 sites we’re selecting. We have a coverage meeting on Wednesday,” county Chief of Staff Daryl Price said of a private Public Safety Committee meeting being held today to discuss the locations of cell towers for the radio signals.

This prompted Commissioner Larry Maggi to raise concerns about the way the process was being handled during Tuesday morning’s agenda meeting, including why no information about the contract was available when it was decided to put it to a vote on Thursday.

“I don’t know how we can vote on a contract if we don’t have (the numbers),” Maggi said.

County officials and the Public Safety Committee, made up of several first responders, have spent the past six weeks reviewing emergency radio contracts submitted June 25 by three different vendors. The meetings were confidential and committee members were required to sign non-disclosure agreements and not allowed to speak publicly about the proposals. MRA Inc. of North Strabane and BK Technologies Inc. of Melbourne, Florida, were the other two vendors that submitted proposals for the radio system.

Commission Chairman Nick Sherman said if they want to approve the Motorola contract this month – which was his stated goal from the start so that they can use the stimulus funds from the American Rescue Plan Act before the end of the year – they must take that step in order to be able to vote on it on Thursday.

“We need to put it on the agenda,” Sherman said.

“We are bound by it,” said Maggi about the possible consequences. “What if the price is exorbitantly high?”

Sherman responded that this was part of the negotiating process and they could turn away from Motorola and consider other options before voting.

“If we are not satisfied with the final numbers, we will take it off the agenda,” Sherman said.

Sherman has been pushing for Motorola to provide the county’s emergency radio system since early last year, when he voted against a $22.545 million contract with MRA Inc. Maggi and former commission chairwoman Diana Irey Vaughan, who retired after her term expired in January, voted to approve the contract with MRA in March 2023 so the radio system can be modernized.

But Sherman and new Commissioner Electra Janis voted in April to terminate the contract and request new bids from telecommunications providers, despite having already spent nearly $9 million last year to allow MRA to begin building its system. Motorola also submitted a bid in early 2023 but was not selected and later submitted a follow-up bid in July that Sherman preferred, even though it arrived after the deadline.

During this round of bidding, Motorola submitted two options – a main offer and an alternate offer. However, it is not known which offer will be considered or if there is an option to select a hybrid version of the two.

The voting session will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday in the commissioners’ public meeting room on the ground floor of the Crossroads Center building at 95 W. Beau St. in Washington.