T-L Photos/GAGE VOTA Belmont County commissioners Vince Gianangeli, on left, and J.P. Dutton listen as Belmont County Department of Job and Family Services Jeff Felton speaks about the importance of non-emergency transportation services for Medicaid recipients.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Belmont County was recently the victim of a cybersecurity incident involving the OnSolve CodeRed system that is used to make emergency notifications to the public.

CodeRed is used to notify residents for various incidents such as evacuation notices, utility outages, water main breaks, fires, floods, chemical spills, and other critical incidents.

“We were notified by the company that user data associated with the legacy OnSolve CodeRED platform was removed from their system. That impacted dataset may have contained contact information of OnSolve CodeRED users: name, address, email address, phone numbers, and/or associated passwords used to create user profiles for alerts,” Belmont County 911 director Bryan Minder said in a news release. “Out of an abundance of caution, all residents who created an account with the CodeRED system and may have used the same password for any other personal or business accounts are urged to change those passwords immediately.”

Belmont County commissioner J.P. Dutton said that the cybersecurity incident wasn’t a Belmont County-specific issue.

“It was by the third-party provider and, as they continue to work through those issues, there is a secondary system in place right now,” Dutton said.

Belmont County has been granted access to an alternate emergency notification platform, CodeRed by Crisis24.

The new system has been implemented and is now operational for issuing emergency alerts.

The Community Notification Enrollment page can be accessed via the link on Belmont County 911’s website at www.belmontcounty911.com or by texting Belmont to 24639 from a mobile device.

Individuals who registered after March 31, 2025 will need to re-enroll, as the backup data used to restore accounts only included information prior to that date.

Further inquiries about the security incident itself should be referred to media@crisis24.com.

Commissioners then approved and signed a contract between Belmont County Department of Job and Family Services and consultant Rebecca Safko for fiscal services related to Workforce Investment Opportunity Act Area 16. The contract will be effective on Jan. 1, 2026 until Dec. 31, 2026 and may not exceed the amount of $41,000.

Dutton added that the contract can be automatically renewed for 2027, 2028, and 2029.

They also approved and signed vendor agreements between DJFS and Barnesville Taxi Services, LLC for $750,000, City of Martins Ferry EMA for $750,000, 59 Green Ltd, DBA Green Cab for $750,000, IC Cab, LLC for $750,000, and Neff Volunteer Fire Department for $900,000. The contracts will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026 and end of Dec. 31, 2026 and are for the provision of Title 19 transportation services which are non-emergency transportation services for Medicaid recipients.

DJFS director Jeff Felton said that his department relies heavily on these non-emergency transportation services.

He added that he is happy to continue to be able to provide residents those services to Belmont County residents who need it.

Felton then said that Safko has been a longtime consultant for DJFS.

“She recently retired, she was the Area 15 director and she recently retired from that position and we’re very happy that she is willing to continue on,” Felton said.

He added that Safko was required to submit a bid for the position and he was more than happy to accept it.