MARSHALL — Lyon County has found a replacement for a system that provides emergency weather notifications to area residents.

On Tuesday, County Commissioners voted to approve a five-year contract for the Motorola RAVE notification service. At a total cost of about $26,000, the Motorola service would be cheaper than the county’s former provider, Sheriff Eric Wallen said.

“Last fall, we got notice that our currently former mass notification system, CodeRED, had a large data breach,” Wallen said.

In December, Wallen said that the breach was believed to have accessed information like users’ names, email addresses, phone numbers and passwords. Lyon County suspended use of the service after the data breach.

At the same time, Lyon County’s contract with the provider of CodeRED was already coming to an end in 2025, Wallen said Tuesday. “We took that opportunity to look at some other options for our mass notification systems.”

In the past, the most common use Lyon County had for mass notifications was alerting area residents to severe storms or other weather emergencies by phone.

“We looked at about four different vendors, and found that the Motorola RAVE product might be the best one to suit our needs,” he said. “It is cheaper than CodeRED. It appears to provide all of the same features that we would look for in a mass notification system.”

Wallen said the service partnered with the National Weather Service and the federal Integrated Public Alert & Warning System.

“The reason that I am before the board, is that they want a five-year commitment,” Wallen said. The five-year price for the service hit the threshold of needing approval from the county board.

Wallen said the Motorola RAVE system had a one-time startup fee of $2,500 and an annual cost of $4,680. Over the five-year period, the total cost would be $25,900.

In comparison, the county’s current service vendor cost $12,353 in 2025.

“So it is considerably cheaper at this juncture,” Wallen said.

Wallen said the county’s funding for mass notification services typically comes out of the 911 account and the emergency management account.