The Warren County Commissioners have approved an agreement with a firm to conduct a review regarding the future of the county’s 911 center.

Commissioner Ben Kafferlin said the agreement with Mission Critical Partners would see them evaluate facilities and then design a plan regarding either the reconstruction of the existing 911 center or a design for its move to a new location.

“I think we absolutely need this in order to make an informed decision,” Kafferlin said of the agreement.

He acknowledged that the next board of commissioners will ultimately be tasked with implementing its recommendations.

“Anything we can do to give them the information they need to get moving is paramount,” he said.

“I hope the next board is able to carry out the plan,” Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said. “The 911 center is a huge need for the county. It really needs a resolution.”

There have been rumblings about a move from the center’s current location on the Rouse grounds to Youngsville Elementary School.

Regardless of where it moves – or if it moves at all – there appears to be a need for the review.

“There’s a lot of things wrong with this old building,” Public Safety Director Ken McCorrison said of the current location. “It wasn’t built to be a functional 911 center. The flow was never really there.

“There are unknown unknowns we need to have the experts look at.”

The purpose for the review then will give the county guidance on what it would take to rehabilitate the existing location or detail the steps that would be necessary to actually move it altogether.

“In an ideal setting,” he explained, the emergency operations center would be immediately off of the 911 center to enhance the “flow of information. Ideally, in most other 911 centers actually, 911 centers are in the center of a building.”

There’s no pressing push to make a decision – or a move – today.

“You do what you have to do with the space you have,” he said. “It’s set up the best that it could be. That wouldn’t be the way we could set it up if it were a blank slate.”

He said he’s reviewed in the area of 25 possible locations – some are too small, others too chopped up, others too expensive.

“We’ll know it when we find the right space,” he said.

He said it would be “preferable but not mandatory” for the location to be in the center of the county and added it’s possible the county may already own the space that would work.

McCorrison added that the current board of commissioners – as well as those set to be elected next month – “both seem to have an interest in making sure that we’re in a spot that works for us.”