County app goes live to strengthen community
By Ginna Young
nine other states, in the effort. “Concern for community is one of our core cooperative principles and that commitment extends beyond our backyard,” said Nic Alberson, CVEC operations manager. “Every day, our crew serves our members, who are also our friends and neighbors. When our crews travel to other cooperatives, they put their all into it and treat it as if it is their own backyard, knowing the favor would be returned by other cooperatives, if we ever faced large outages in our service area.”
With a one-stop-shop for all public safety-related questions and needs, the new Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office (WI) app is the right fit for any community in the Chippewa Valley. The app got its existence when the county was using a mass notification software that was deemed operationally inefficient, so Chippewa County Sheriff Travis Hakes worked with his department to research other methods.
“The app was something I had seen other places and thought it could be beneficial to the community here, so we had it developed,” said Hakes. “This platform has been more effective than our previous software.”
Working with a company called OCV, to develop the app, Hakes made sure the app was unique to the Chippewa Valley, although it is free for anyone to download/ use at the Google Playstore.
“We also were the first group in the nation, to network some of our FEMA programs into our app, to reduce costs in other areas,” said Hakes.
After about six months of fine-tuning the app, it was ready for launch. Featured, are not just public safety and weather alerts, but also a calendar of community events, resources links, such as mental health help and even a record of county inmates at the time.
“We feel that making the information in the app accessible will help strengthen our relationship with the community we serve,” said Hakes, “while also reducing some of the employee work load, by answering questions from the public that are now readily available in the app.”
Chippewa Valley Electric Cooperative (CVEC) crew members Greg Olmstead (left) and Tyler Jones, join 45 crew members from 15 Wisconsin electric co-ops, who left for South Carolina, to assist with storm recovery, after Hurricane Helene left catastrophic damage. While power outages across the southeast in Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina topped 800,000, that’s not the whole story. This storm not only caused damage, but in some areas, complete decimation. Crews heading south are prepared for a deployment expected to last between one and two weeks, working in challenging conditions, including mountainous terrain and extensive flooding. Wisconsin crews will join electric cooperative crews from at least Submitted Photo
