When you picture emergency management in a small New England town, you might imagine a single binder gathering dust in a filing cabinet. Petersham, Massachusetts, deserved something far more useful.
A rural Worcester County community of roughly 500 households bordering the Quabbin Reservation and Harvard Forest, Petersham faces emergency communications challenges that cannot be solved by a generic template. So, when Capital Strategic Solutions partnered with the Town and teamed up with radio communications specialist LB Comms, the goal was not simply to write a plan. It was to build a complete, living system.
The resulting framework speaks to residents in plain language, equips volunteers and officials with tools they can use under pressure, and gives Town leadership a clear and honest roadmap for closing real gaps.
A Rural Town With Real Challenges
In Petersham, no single channel, system, or piece of equipment can be the only thing standing between residents and safety.
The Town's emergency communications environment comes with a specific set of hurdles: dispersed households, limited cellular coverage, an aging population with a median age north of 56, private wells that stop operating when the power goes out, and documented multi-day outages where restoration can stretch toward a week.
Add wildfire risk, seasonal flooding, and classic New England ice storms, and it becomes clear why "call 911 and hope" was never going to be a communications strategy.
The CSS team therefore set out to build something layered and redundant, designed around the realities of Petersham's roads, terrain, residents, volunteers, and available infrastructure.
What the Project Delivered
Rather than producing a single document, the engagement created a full communications ecosystem for the Town.
- Emergency Communications Plan The foundational, ICS/NIMS-aligned plan governing how the Town activates, communicates, and coordinates during an emergency.
- Community Emergency Guide A plain-language, resident-facing companion covering CodeRED registration, alert types, power outage safety, flood and wildfire preparedness, and a complete family preparedness checklist.
- Public Information Officer Toolkit Pre-approved alert messages and press release templates covering severe weather, sheltering, evacuations, road closures, and other high-pressure situations.
- Best Management Practices Assessment An honest evaluation of planning, governance, alerting, radio interoperability, EMS/CMED integration, volunteer training, equipment resilience, special populations, cybersecurity, and after-action review.
- Tiered Recommendations Roadmap Practical next steps organized into high-impact, low-cost actions; equipment investments; and longer-horizon resilience programs, each connected to a potential funding pathway.
Together, these resources do more than describe Petersham's emergency communications posture. They give the Town a way to measure it, improve it, and pay for it.
The Team Behind the Work
This project came together through a true partnership between Capital Strategic Solutions and LB Comms. CSS led the overall planning effort, including governance, public safety coordination, public information, and grant strategy. LB Comms brought the specialized radio and interoperability expertise needed to get the technical communications details right.
The pairing reflects how CSS approaches highly specialized work: bring in the right subject-matter partner rather than stretching generalist staff across a technical discipline like public safety radio.
Nichol Figueiredo
CEO, Capital Strategic SolutionsLed the engagement and took point on the Public Information Officer components, including the pre-scripted messaging library, alert templates, and social media guidance.
Patti Grigas
Senior Project ManagerPatti helped develop the public safety framework for the plan, including governance, command succession, mutual aid coordination, EMS/CMED integration, and volunteer training procedures.
Ed Burman
Senior Project ManagerEd contributed to the development of the plan's public safety framework, supporting governance, emergency operations, mutual aid coordination, and training components.
Paul Normandin
Senior Project ManagerPaul worked alongside the project team to develop the operational elements of the plan, helping strengthen emergency coordination, response procedures, and implementation readiness.
Heather Lemieux
Senior Project Manager and MVP Program ManagerLed grant strategy, oversaw the MVP grant supporting the engagement, and connected identified needs to potential funding pathways, including EMPG, HSGP, BRIC, and USDA Rural Development.
Mark Cady
LB CommsAddressed Petersham's radio interoperability landscape, including GMRS licensing, Police Low Band interoperability, shelter coverage testing, and pathways toward ARES/RACES and LTE-RoIP capability.
One Integrated Project Team
Planning, public safety, funding, and radio expertiseThe collaboration allowed Petersham to receive one coordinated body of work instead of disconnected planning and technical assessments. Each discipline informed the others, creating a more realistic and actionable system for Town officials, responders, volunteers, and residents.
In Their Words
Why This Approach Matters
What sets this project apart is its candor, its redundancy, and its focus on what a small, volunteer-dependent town can actually sustain.
Rather than presenting a plan that reads as complete on paper, the Best Management Practices document grades Petersham honestly. It flags gaps such as unprogrammed radios, an unlicensed GMRS channel, and untested in-building coverage at the designated shelter, then pairs every gap with a concrete, prioritized action and a potential funding source.
That is the difference between a plan that sits in a drawer and one a small town can actually use: every identified weakness is tied to a next step.
The system is also built around communications redundancy. CodeRED is the Town's primary alerting platform, but the plan never assumes that one method will reach everyone.
- CodeRED
- Town website
- Police Facebook page
- NOAA Weather Radio
- Wireless Emergency Alerts
- Vehicle PA systems
- Door-to-door welfare checks
By carrying the same information across multiple channels, Petersham can reach residents who are digitally connected as well as those living at the end of a rural road with limited or no cell service.
Looking Ahead
With the planning foundation in place, Petersham's next chapter is implementation: training volunteers, running the first annual communications exercise, closing the radio interoperability gaps identified by LB Comms, and pursuing the grant opportunities mapped through the project.
Prepare volunteers and officials to activate the system confidently through recurring drills and an annual communications exercise.
Improve licensing, programming, interoperability, backup power, and in-building radio coverage.
Use MVP and other identified grant pathways to move priority recommendations from planning into operation.
It is the kind of unglamorous, essential work that may not make headlines until the day a storm knocks out power for a week and a well-prepared Town keeps its residents safe anyway.
Building a Culture of Preparedness
Capital Strategic Solutions is proud to have supported the Town of Petersham through this work, made possible by the Town's Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grant, and grateful for the technical partnership of LB Comms in getting the radio communications details right.
Rural towns do not need generic emergency plans.They need plans built for their roads, their terrain, their available resources, and their neighbors, backed by the right funding and the right partners. That is exactly what this project set out to deliver: not a binder, but a living communications system Petersham can continue to strengthen long after the planning process is complete.
About Capital Strategic Solutions
Capital Strategic Solutions (CSS) is a certified woman-owned, disadvantaged business enterprise specializing in innovative, cost-effective solutions for local governments. Backed by a multidisciplinary team of municipal experts, CSS offers tailored services in public administration, finance, HR, emergency management, public safety, public works, communications, project management, grant administration and interim staffing—helping communities minimize risk and maximize success.