Extends Mutualink; Sedona PD says more ‘prudent to wait’ until developed
The Yavapai County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the $600,000 annual contract for up to four additional one-year terms renewable through 2030 with Mutualink Inc. during its March 18 meeting.
The School Safety Interoperability Program, for which the contracts were approved, was established under Arizona Revised Statute §41-1733.
“On average, we’re seeing across America one shooting about every four days in school on school campuses, and so the risk to the students in the county is high,” Mutualink CEO Chrissie Coffey said.
Mutualink operates in 10 counties in Arizona. Its systems allows direct communication between school cameras, school staff and emergency dispatchers. The Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District was the county’s original pilot program that was authorized in 2022 with a county $150,000 appropriation.
“The system currently supports 17 school districts/charter schools, six law enforcement agencies, and over 340 individual school sites and public safety users, providing panic button integration, real-time video sharing, floorplan access, and secure push-to-talk communications,” the meeting agenda reads.
“As large as your county is, you have complexities in rural areas and then densely populated areas … which create an incredibly complex response to a school shooting or other crisis,” Coffey said.
The funding comes from the state of Arizona. The board previously accepted the money at its Nov. 5 meeting, during which it also approved state funding for several Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office capital projects totaling over $5.2 million. The largest was $2 million in seed funding for a future Criminal Information Intelligence Analysis Coordination Center.
The $600,000 annual benefit is shared among all participating agencies and school districts across the county. In the Verde Valley, the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office accounts for $130,300 and the Clarkdale Police Department $36,700. Beaver Creek, Clarkdale- Jerome and Mingus Union High school districts each pay $15,300 annually, while Mountain View Preparatory pays $14,300. Daniel Bright Elementary, Cottonwood Educational Services, Cottonwood Community School and Oak Creek School in Cornville are each billed $3,800.
“It gives us a lot of comfort knowing that if as soon as the alert goes out, they’ll go out to the county, to us and anybody that’s closest can respond immediately,” Clarkdale Police Chief Randy Taylor said.
Sedona Not Included
The Sedona Police Department conducted an evaluation of Mutualink in 2023, along with additional reviews with the city’s Information Technology Department, that identified several concerns, including network connectivity issues and integration problems with SPD’s Computer- Aided Dispatch and Records System.
“Additionally, at that time, Mutualink had not yet been fully implemented across all intended schools and law enforcement agencies,” SPD Chief Stephanie Foley wrote Tuesday, March 24. “Given these factors, SPD determined it was prudent to wait until the system was more fully developed and the identified issues were addressed. Since that time, the department has not had any additional updates or engagement regarding the program.”
Foley said she was confident that SPD’s current capabilities and procedures are sufficient for school safety.
Private Schools
Supervisor Chris Kuknyo [R-District 4] asked YCSO about deploying the system to private schools.
“I have been fighting with the auditor general of the state, who we have a disagreement about the wording in the statute,” Sheriff David Rhodes [R] said. “Essentially the statute is ambiguous, and my position is that the funding is for public safety capacity, and the lens of the auditor general is that this is education funding.”
Under the school safety interoperability fund, ARS §41-1733(A)(2), the program “enables the deployment of a secure, multimedia data communications system to a user base consisting of public safety agencies and public schools.”
Rhodes said he had installed Mutualink at Verde Christian Academy, a private school in Cottonwood, “and that was something of a little bit of a controversy.”
On Dec. 18, the Arizona Auditor General’s released a special audit of the state’s School Safety Interoperability Fund that has spent $26 million since 2019 to improve communications between public schools and law enforcement agencies. The audit found YCSO was among four of the 14 law enforcement agencies that used public funds for private and/or tribal schools.
“Statute authorizes fund monies to be spent only for K-12 public schools, which does not include private schools,” the report reads. “We were unable to determine the amount of fund monies, if any, [YCSO] spent to benefit the private school due to the agency’s lack of specific vendor pricing documentation. However, we estimated that the value the private school received from the fund by participating in the system was approximately $17,100.”
The audit also found YCSO failed to follow any of the five contracting best practices outlined by the Auditor General’s Office, such as having no performance standards, no penalties, no termination provisions and no detailed pricing information.
