As we reported late last year, the Guthrie County Sheriff’s office received a $100,000 grant from the South Central Iowa E911 Services Board to make improvements to their dispatch center and communications tower.

That new equipment has recently been installed. Dispatcher Paula Martinson tells Raccoon Valley Radio it improves her job and her ability to serve the public. “We have the new headsets, which enable us to walk around and answer calls and radio traffic without being at the dispatch center. We have a new paging system that eliminates an open microphone after a page, blocks out traffic from other counties and we’ll have a new repeater button which will be set up soon and that will also help with cross-county traffic.”

Additionally, the new center allows for two dispatchers to work simultaneously during especially busy times. Martinson says the sleek, high-tech equipment gives Guthrie County dispatching facilities that are on par with some of the best in the state.