Brazos County's mass emergency alerts are moving to a new vendor, and College Station's City Council is being asked Monday to sign the agreement that spells out who pays for it and who gets to push the button.
An interlocal agreement on the council's Nov. 16 consent agenda sets terms for Brazos County, the City of Bryan and the City of College Station to share an emergency notification system run by the vendor Regroup. The county holds the contract. Under the draft, it pays Regroup $34,500 for calendar year 2027, including setup costs, then bills each city for a third.
That works out to $11,500 apiece for the county, Bryan and College Station.
The agreement lets either city send emergency notices inside its own limits without approval from the county or the other city. The county's emergency management coordinator controls the user accounts, each city decides which of its own employees may send alerts, and each partner answers for the messages it sends. Renewal increases are capped at 3.5% a year unless the county and Regroup agree otherwise.
Why a new system
The county's previous platform was CodeRED. On its alerts page, Brazos County Emergency Management says it was told of a data breach of the system, that names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and passwords used to sign up may have been exposed, and that it was working with county purchasing on a replacement.
Until then, the page says, emergency alerts would go out through FEMA's Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, the network that pushes warnings to cellphones, and it advises residents to keep the emergency alert settings on their phones turned on.
CodeRED's operator, Crisis24, permanently shut the platform down in November 2025 after a ransomware attack, CyberScoop reported at the time, and attackers leaked personal information belonging to users.
