It's an enduring image from southeast Minnesota's 2007 floods: Winona County Sheriff Dave Brand juggling three cell phones that were ringing because his radios weren't working.

Brand used cell phones in the days after the floods to communicate with other law-enforcement agencies that don't share radio systems with Winona County. That problem could be solved if the county joins a statewide effort to upgrade radios so public agencies can communicate more easily.

But the radio upgrade comes with a whopping pricetag: In Winona County alone, state and local authorities could spend more than $10 million on it. Winona County and Goodview leaders are wringing their hands about how to pay the bill, especially as Wisconsin agencies upgrade their radios at what some say is one-sixth the cost.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation already has spent more than $5 million to build radio towers in Winona County alone. And the local cost of the radio upgrade could be another $6 million - a sum that county commissioner Marcia Ward isn't sure how to pay.

"We've kind of got a $5 million to

$6 million pricetag looming out there," Ward said. "It's a big unknown."

A needed upgrade

Winona County saw the shortcomings of its radio system in 2007, but the national wake-up call came six years earlier on Sept. 11, 2001.

Stories of rescuers unable to talk to each other during that disaster spurred efforts to improve communications between public agencies. There's another factor motivating states to upgrade their radios: A federal requirement for government agencies to use narrow-band radios by 2013, issued to ease a shortage of available radio bandwidth.

But critics say Minnesota has picked a far more expensive path to upgrade communications than neighboring Wisconsin. The Minnesota Department of Transportation is building a network of 800-megahertz radios for use by state and local agencies, which Winona and 58 other counties have opted to use. Wisconsin is building a mixed network of 800-megahertz radios in urban areas and VHF radios in rural areas.

MnDOT is spending about $270 million to build a network of more than 300 radio towers statewide, said a spokesman for that agency. Meanwhile Wisconsin has set aside about $43 million to build its network and buy radios, said a spokesman for the Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance.

Minnesota officials insist the two figures aren't comparable. Wisconsin's approach creates a patchwork of radio systems with fewer towers, which will be less seamless and provide poorer transmission quality than the Minnesota network, said Scott Wiggins, spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

The Wisconsin network also won't provide the large capacity that's crucial in big emergencies like the 2007 floods, when scores of responders need to communicate and can overwhelm the system, Wiggins said.

"It's an untested solution," Wiggins said.

A high price tag

In Winona County, local leaders have many unanswered questions about the radio upgrade.

That trepidation was evident Tuesday evening when county commissioners discussed buying new radios for their sheriff's department. Commissioners postponed the decision after pressing Winona County Sheriff's Deputy Mike Peterson to research cheaper alternatives.

County commissioners long have voiced reservations about the cost of the upgrade, but Ward says the decision to build it was largely made for them when MnDOT began building its 800-megahertz network. If Winona County had opted for VHF radios like most Wisconsin agencies, the county couldn't use Minnesota's new towers, Ward said.

Southeast Minnesota's hilly terrain makes building the network more difficult here, but MnDOT compensated by building six towers in Winona County - twice as many as in other counties, MnDOT spokesman Mark Gieseke said. The agency recently finished building towers in Elba, Troy, Rollingstone, Wilson, Nodine and Dresbach, and Peterson said early tests of their coverage are "very encouraging."

But Winona County must fill gaps in the state network, and they've identified one over the city of Winona, Peterson said. The county should determine how to address that when it completes a plan sometime in 2010, he said. Winona County should get state help for the project, thanks to a $1.26 million grant from the Department of Public Safety.

Ward says it's imperative for Winona County leaders to have a plan for the radio upgrade by early 2010. That would relieve Goodview Police Chief Kent Russell, who knows all about the importance of interagency communication. Like Brand, he relied on his cell phone in the days following the 2007 floods, which ravaged parts of Goodview.

But Russell also worries if his small department can absorb the cost of upgrading to 800-mhz radios. Goodview doesn't know how many radios it will need or how much they'll cost, Russell said.

"There are all these unknowns," Russell said. "It's going to cost a lot of money, and we need to know where we start saving."