Going into the November elections, let’s get a few things straight about Deschutes County’s $5.5 million-plus 911 digital radio system.

County government got it wrong.

Deschutes County commissioners purchased a radio system for county law enforcement with performance below the national standard for public safety. What’s worse: They didn’t even know it.

Commissioners are the full-time oversight and policymakers for county government. So what are we paying them for?

When the system went live a year ago, complaints flooded in. Confidence cratered in December when Bend police officers alleged that the system was so poor, it was endangering their workplace. The county is still struggling to get it right.

How commissioners failed was made all the more clear at a county work session Monday. Commissioners seemed surprised to learn about the work ADCOMM Engineering Co. was doing for the county — or, rather, the work it was not doing. ADCOMM is the contractor the county hired to provide technical expertise for the project. ADCOMM billed almost no hours for the county from January 2017 through when it was switched on in summer 2017. Why not?

Deschutes County 911 directed them not to work. ADCOMM received an email from 911 in January 2017 saying 911 would handle the installation of the new radio system. That was despite the fact that 911 employees had never installed a digital radio system before. Why didn’t commissioners know the county was not getting technical support for a complicated project taxpayers were paying more than $5 million for?

Commissioners were just not providing much oversight. Then-911 Director Steve Reinke was calling the shots. Commissioners didn’t ask a lot of questions.

Nowhere is that more apparent than from comments made by Commissioner Tony DeBone. He was the commission’s closest link to the project. He was the liaison to the 911 user board, the group made up of the county’s police and fire chiefs. That board is an advisory board, an opportunity for public safety leaders to share information and learn about what 911 is doing.

The user board met only three times in 2017. 911 canceled the other scheduled meetings, saying there was nothing to talk about. DeBone didn’t raise a fuss. He has said before that nobody was complaining, so he thought everything was OK. That’s an interesting insight into DeBone’s vision of oversight.

In Monday’s meeting, what was also revealing was one way the commissioners missed the fact that they were buying a system below the public safety standard. Commissioners don’t recall that anyone told them the county needed what is called a 3.4 system, the public safety standard. The county purchased a 3.0 system, which has lower audio quality.

Where was that missed? Reinke, who has left 911, should have made that distinction crystal clear to commissioners. He failed to do so.

It was, though, in a county document. Commissioners paid about $110,000 for a consultant report — called the Sparling report. It made recommendations and cost estimates for the new digital radio system before the county bought it. The report specifies that the county should get a 3.4 system. DeBone said Monday he “did not get into the weeds” of the report and relied on it more for its financial estimates.

Commissioners do, of course, get pages and pages of reports and documents every week to review. When they don’t bother with details or to ask questions on multi-million-dollar projects, they get messes like the radio system.

The difference between a 3.4 system and 3.0 system is subjective. A 3.0 system is defined as: “Speech understandable with slight effort. Occasional repetition needed due to noise or distortion.” A 3.4 system is described as: “Speech understandable with repetition only rarely required. Some noise or distortion.”

The subjective nature of those standards is another important consideration of how the county got this project wrong. It is clear after Monday’s meeting that the county should have put into the contract an additional measure of system quality that is not subjective. It is called bit error rate. The county should require in any contract for the radio system a bit error rate of 2 percent in data transmission, according to Rick Allen, who was hired by the county to get the radio system back on track. He said it is commonly written into such contracts. The county failed to require it.

Sometimes, a mistake is just a mistake. It should be forgiven as a mental fumble or an isolated incident.

The problems with the county’s purchase and implementation of the new 911 radio system were not simple mistakes. They reveal a shocking pattern of AWOL oversight by the commissioners. Commissioners are committed to making the system work and have even shown an interest in getting into the weeds. Is that enough?

Remember to ask candidates for county commission how they will do better. Remember when you vote.