Acquired grants entirely pay for radio conversion

Visitors to the Lincoln County Emergency Management Agency office at Libby City Hall will see boxes stacked high, apparently a burden to navigate the office. 

However, for Deputy Director Lisa Oedewaldt, those boxes do not represent an obstacle. Instead, they represent success, fruits of her labors.

Inside these brown boxes stacked high enough to match her height, are radios and transmission devices to keep the county emergency agencies communicating. And the best aspect is these radios didn’t cost the county a cent. Inside the boxes are hundreds of radios purchased with three grants totaling $143,425.42, all with grants written by Oedewaldt.

The purchases of radios became necessary as the Federal Communication Commission ordered a conversion to narrowband frequency radios by Jan. 1.

So, while some more modern radios could be converted from wideband to narrowband, many of county radios could not, and that’s when Oedewaldt began to put ink to grant-writing paper.

To aid in the conversion, the Lincoln County EMA office partnered with Flathead County and managed to secure a grant for new mobile and handheld radios.  This grant would allow the county to purchase the needed equipment to convert to narrowband.

Vic White, EMA director, and Oedewaldt began their effort to determine county emergency workers’ radio needs, contacting all fire, EMS, and search and rescue agencies to get a count on what each of them needed. 

“Months of work went into the paperwork, meetings and travel in order to get the information that was imperative to the switch,” Oedewaldt said.

The state awarded the Dual County Grant and Lincoln County was awarded 70 mobile radios for emergency vehicles, 211 handheld radios for emergency responders and 16 base stations for those agencies that need them in their buildings for a total amount of $78,000.  

Additional grants for $36,000 and another for $29,425.42 completed the transition.