It was a busy morning at the Fulton County Sheriff's Office Monday, where community members packed the house for a tour of the new 911 Dispatch Center and the official ribbon cutting ceremony.

The move has been a long time coming since the start of the project in 2018 that originally studied a 300 foot tower. After multiple road blocks and broken promises, when the tower and engineering group couldn't follow through with the promise they made to Fulton County Commissioners about saving tax payers money by bidding the tower project out, Gail Karas, Fulton County 911 Communications Director, took over the project. Karas and the commissioners would soon learn that getting the larger companies to communicate with each other for the wireline connection was also no easy task. 

With the help of Indiana State Treasurer Dan Elliott, things finally began to come together. Elliott was among those who gathered for Monday's ribbon  cutting. 

Now able to have some breathing room for her staff, Karas led tours of the new space that will be available to the 12 dispatchers currently employed there starting March 28. Taking a progressive step forward, the team will now be connected to the state's core for interoperability. Had they not gotten this accomplished, a change of equipment would have been needed, but Karas said that was something that "just wasn't going to happen." 

Karas explained the system during her tour introduction of the center.