Greene County 911's board of directors received a report Tuesday on how mapping has progressed at the 911 office with its new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) equipment.

The mapping equipment was installed earlier this year to upgrade the 911 system's CAD server. The equipment allows new mapping of outdated data within the system.

It allows 911 dispatchers to better communicate locations to police, fire and emergency units who are responding to an emergency call.

"The mapping is going real well," said 911 director Jerry Bird.

Currently, Bird saidthe dispatchers have been working on going through each road and assigning segments.

"Each segment between intersections of roads, we're giving it the address range," he explained. "Therefore, whenever a call comes in, the dispatchers will have the option to do routing.

"In order to get the routing properly functional in the map, we had to have address ranges between each road intersection," he added.

Bird said he anticipates the mapping to be completed shortly.

"Once we get that done, the next process," he said, "is training through the mapping company. Then we should be able to start live around the first of October."

Bird also gave a report on plans involving a coordinated regional 911 system in the eight-county region of Northeast Tennessee.

He said the telephone company wants a report back from each 911 district in the region if they would rather purchase or lease the equipment involved in the "Next Generation" 911 project.

Updated equipment will be needed in the next two years, and the eight 911 districts in the Northeast Tennesseee region are discussing coordinating their equipment to increase their effectiveness on a regional basis.

Tentative plans call for a coordinated regional 911 system but with two base centers, so that if one should be unable to function for some reason, there would still be a functioning regional center.

The decision as to whether to lease or to purchase the equipment is the first step in adopting a regional system, Bird said.

The Tennessee Emergency Communications Board voted earlier this year to adopt a funding plan to connect local Emergency Communications Districts to the Next Generation 911 project.

Under this plan, the state is distributing funds to local emergency communications districts.

The new system will enable calls accidentally received by local 911 centers from distant counties to be easily transferred to the proper local 911 center. It will also enable 911 centers to accept text messages in addition to telephone calls.

Bird said the state government is going to be providing enough funds for each district to purchase the next generation equipment that will be needed to handle the call-taking. This is the equipment that gets the calls from your home or cell phone into the 911 office.

The idea is for all of the eight 911 districts in Northeast Tennessee (from Greene County to Johnson County) to pool their funds and to have two centrally located systems running concurrently, he said.

"This is so that if one goes down, the other will stay up with continuous coverage," he explained.

Rather than each 911 district purchasing its own system and having it installed in their center, by pooling their (state) monies together, they can each upgrade their recording systems and computers -- without tapping into their individual 911 budgets or asking for additional contributions, Bird said.

"My personal thought is ... if the state is going to give us the money, then go ahead and purchase it now. If times do get hard later on, then we don't have to worry about how we're going to pay a lease agreement," he said.

Bird said most of the districts in the Northeast Tennessee region seem more interested in purchasing rather than leasing.

Based upon Bird's recommendation, the board voted to report that they would rather purchase the "Next Generation" equipment.

On another matter, the board agreed to a budget amendment due to a reduction in requested local funding.

"Basically we're getting the same amount of money that we got last year," Bird said. "And I needed to bring that to the board for approval."

Bird said Greene County's funding was $94,683 -- 2 percent less than the requested $96,615.

The 911 director said he also expects less funding from Greeneville.