The Authority’s Regional E-911 fund provides grants for startup costs associated with E-911 services in Georgia’s economically challenged counties.
The grant was one of more than $7 million in OneGeorgia grant awards announced Wednesday by Gov. Sonny Perdue at an Authority board meeting in Statesboro.
“The OneGeorgia Authority is a valuable resource for rural Georgia,” Perdue said in a statement.
Baker County Commission Chairman T.E. Moye, Miller County Commission Chairwoman Barbie Womble and other county officials accepted the award in Statesboro Wednesday.
The grant is great news for Baker County, whose residents have relied for several years on a telephone-911 system that provided no information to dispatchers about a caller’s location, Baker County Manager Evelyn Phillips said.
The county of approximately 4,000 residents was one of only six in Georgia without Enhanced 911 service.
“We feel very privileged to be able to offer this to our citizens,” Phillips said.
The improved service will route Baker’s 911 calls to an existing E911 dispatch center in Miller County, with relays at the Baker County Jail and Baker EMS station in Newton, she said.
With a caller’s location obtained using Global Positioning System (GPS) mapping, emergency vehicles will likely arrive at the scene faster, Phillips said.
Most of the project’s planning is already complete, so the service should be operational within a few months, she said.
Other awards announced Wednesday for the region included OneGeorgia Equity Fund awards of $500,000 to Dooly County and Berrien counties and a $200,000 EDGE award to Quitman County for an expansion at a manufacturer of fishing lures.
Ken Stewart, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, announced that Colquitt, Lee, Mitchell, Early, Macon and eight other Georgia counties had achieved the state designation of “Entrepreneur-Friendly.”
Georgia’s 109 communities that now have earned the designation are eligible for OneGeorgia grants of up to $25,000 for small business development.
The OneGeorgia Authority was created using a third of the state’s settlement money from a class-action lawsuit against tobacco companies. The Authority expects to receive about $1.6 billion over the 25-year term of the settlement.