LISBON - The county's 911 advisory committee will be implementing new digital maps with the enhanced emergency service since the current ones have been providing problems during testing phases.

At the Columbiana County 911 Technical Advisory Committee meeting Tuesday afternoon, at the Lisbon courthouse, a motion was passed to use new mapping services that offer more reliable and precise data than their current service.

"It's time to look at something else," Robert Emmons, 911 director said to the committee. "It's not as good and reliable as we thought."

Emmons said the 911 mapping system, that has been tested in various areas throughout the county, has been "unacceptable." Some police and fire officials experienced incorrect readings on the current service.

Emmons also unsuccessfully tried to contact the Tiger map data company for about three weeks. Once they were reached, the problem only took about 15 minutes to be fixed, said Emmons.

"I don't feel comfortable with that kind of performance with a vendor," the director told the committee.

The new mapping service, NAVTEQ, has been used by other companies like Yahoo, Google, MapQuest, Garmin and TomTom.

"The map data is excellent. It's not perfect, but it's a huge step over Tiger data," Emmons said.

The new mapping service had been already evaluated by Emmons and deemed "excellent" as it provided better reliability and accuracy than the current maps on the system.

There will also be a five-mile buffer zone that spreads all-around the outside border the county.

The annual map subscription will cost $77,875 with quarterly updates. The cost to import the maps had not been determined at the time of the meeting.

According to Emmons, coincidently, Columbiana County was recently re-mapped by NAVTEQ, so their service will have the latest data available by the company.

NAVTEQ, though, will only be used for at least a year, before the county implements an even better service. In roughly a year, Emmons hopes to have the centerline map data collection finished.

The centerline map data, according to Emmons will provide precise entryways to each property in the county. The NAVTEQ maps do not go into details of showing which side of the road a call originates from or the driveways to houses, said Emmons.

Emmons and County Commissioner Dan Bing have been looking into Digital Data Technologies (DDTI) as a possible company for the finalized 911 mapping service that can take advantage of the centerline data gathering method.

The progressive upgrading of maps is a matter of "good, better, best," with the NAVTEQ maps being at the middle stage, said Emmons. The state of Ohio and Columbiana County will work together in this process.

Also at the 911 meeting:

- East Palestine, East Liverpool, Wellsville, Lisbon, Rogers, New Waterford and Salineville had success testing results. Center, Elkrun, Unity, Middleton, St. Clair, Liverpool, Madison, Yellow Creek, Washington and Wayne townships also reported similar success.

- Fax lines for the emergency buildings will be installed throughout July and August. Local telephone companies will be installing the machines and running the lines. Fax machine locations are to be clearly marked to allow the proper length of wires to be used.

- the annual maintenance agreement motion was passed for the Dynamic Instruments Voice Recorders at all five PSAP locations. The total costs is $11,400.

- the estimated total annual projections for the 911 program is about $102,600.