The Cascade County Sheriff’s Office has canceled the planned CodeRED test for 10 a.m. Nov. 12.
Sheriff Jesse Slaughter said the system has been experiencing technical difficulties, affecting both the public sign-up and internal system access.
The CodeRED system has been down since at least Monday afternoon, based on The Electric’s attempts to access the sign-up page.
County Disaster and Emergency Services, now a division of CCSO, was partnering with the Great Falls Police Department and Great Falls Fire Rescue for the test, which has been postponed.
County officials are working with CodeRED to correct the issue and ensure all user registrations are functioning properly. Once that’s complete, they’ll schedule a new test date, according to CCSO.
The county implemented CodeRED in 2015 and the first real test of the system was the 2016 Vineyard fire.
In October, Cascade County Commissioners approved a three year contract for CodeRED.
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The contact total is $30,334.26, divided equally as $10,111.42 for each of the three years of the contract term.
The system, provided by OnSolve, is an emergency communication program used countywide to notify the public of emergencies, but is also used internally by Cascade County Sheriff’s Office, Great Falls Police Department and Great Falls Fire Rescue.
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The new contract runs Nov. 14 through Nov. 13, 2028 and includes 127,500 message units annually, with overages billed at 10 cents per message unit in blocks of 12,750.
During their Oct. 8 work session, Undersheriff Scott Van Dyken said that the system is run through Cascade County Disaster and Emergency Services, which is now housed within CCSO.
It’s a “very, very important system,” he said.
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The county can send emergency notifications countywide, or geofence them for specific incidents, depending on the situation, he said.
“This is a great tool,” Van Dyken said.
He said the county hasn’t even exceeded its annual allotment of messages.
The city is not currently paying the county for use of CodeRED, nor is the city contributing in the new three-year contract, Van Dyken said.
During a May 19 CCSO budget discussion with county commissioners, Van Dyken said the county was doing an bridge contract for CodeRED for three months while working out the final details of a new contract, which at that time was estimated at $12,000 annually.
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Van Dyken said they’ll need to look at sharing those costs with the city since the county can’t keep absorbing that cost.
He said they could consider using a similar formula to dispatch fees the city charges and offset those costs.
“No matter what it is, they should pay their share,” County Commissioner Jim Larson said in May.
