Roswell, GA - Roswell OKs agreement for unified radio system

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Metrofire31

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New North Fulton System

I couldn't help but chuckle when reading the article. Roswell's Mayor and Police Chief have obviously "drunk the blue kook-aid". How is it that Harris (who I don't work for or own stock), has been allowing our military to effectively communicate for years but Roswell can't count on them for reliability. FUNNY! I worked for a very large communications company for 32 years and we used multiple suppliers for infrastructure and site switches for decades, yet Roswell can only count on one supplier. When are our civic leaders going to top believing the b****h** a certain two-way radio company tells people. Can't we elect or hire government leaders who aren't terminally gullible? Do the math - do your OWN analysis - have an open mind - be concerned about not paying one dime of our money more than necessary. Just because an adjacent system is supplied by one company, do NOT believe that communications equipment and technology in 2012 is so antiquated that it will not interconnect. And PUL-LEEZE, stop using INTEROPERABILITY as the basis for your contracts. Ya'll have EVERY means NOW to talk with any agency in the Metro area. It's not that you can't - you just DON'T!!! Instead, your idea of interoperability is to ask the Dispatcher to contact the other agency what your field unit wants to know.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK! The taxpayers aren't buying your lame arguments and neither should you.
 

MTS2000des

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Just more good old boy Gawga gubment. That's how we do things round here.

Not only was Harris excluded for completely bogus reasons, but a real RFP was never put out. Cassidian and EF Johnson were also ignored. Typical "dirty south" way of doing business.

Furthermore, the biggest shame is how the north county cities refused to work with Fulton county's plan to collectively upgrade the aging Smartnet II system to digital shows how they've had their own agenda. Could the fact that the county, unlike the north county cities, actually DID put a multi-vendor contract out and are considering Harris and Cassidian and not just blindly giving the contract to Motorola and want a multi-vendor system?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the entire process in this state of procurement of public safety radio systems needs an enema. To start with, the option of bypassing the open bid process by paying state contract pricing is needs to be eliminated. This is the most anti-competitive and expensive part for taxpayers. So much money gets wasted and so many qualified vendors never even get a chance to go up at bat because of this state law that allows the entire open bid process to be bypassed.
 

RobertsRadio

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Procurement of North Fulton Cities New Radio System

The truth of the matter is most cities and counties do not have "experts" on staff who truly know two-way radio technology the way they should to make an unbiased recommendation on the proper course their particular agency should take in a project this size. If you were to poll the cities throughout the metro Atlanta area, and even across the entire State of Georgia, you will find the majority have a ranking public safety official, such as a fire lieutenant or police captain, making the recommendations/decisions on radio purchases and maintenance along with the many other duties they perform, such as managing a fire station and it's personnel or a shift in the uniform patrol division. With this being the case, the majority of these "experts" don't have the time to truly dive into the technological data provided by the multilple two-way radio vendors or test the various brands and models to make the decision that is best for the agency both operationally and economically. The end result is they take the short cut and stay with the brand they have been using for years by using the State Contract as the easy way out, when in fact two or more vendors have been known to beat their own State Contract Pricing when put into a competative bid situation. Most cities and counties don't know this because they rely strictly on sole sourcing a multi-million dollar project and never even consider the Request For Proposal or competative bid process because they do not want to spend the time reviewing and researching the information the vendors submit. What a shame....
 

MTS2000des

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The truth of the matter is most cities and counties do not have "experts" on staff who truly know two-way radio technology the way they should to make an unbiased recommendation on the proper course their particular agency should take in a project this size. If you were to poll the cities throughout the metro Atlanta area, and even across the entire State of Georgia, you will find the majority have a ranking public safety official, such as a fire lieutenant or police captain, making the recommendations/decisions on radio purchases and maintenance along with the many other duties they perform, such as managing a fire station and it's personnel or a shift in the uniform patrol division. With this being the case, the majority of these "experts" don't have the time to truly dive into the technological data provided by the multilple two-way radio vendors or test the various brands and models to make the decision that is best for the agency both operationally and economically. The end result is they take the short cut and stay with the brand they have been using for years by using the State Contract as the easy way out, when in fact two or more vendors have been known to beat their own State Contract Pricing when put into a competative bid situation. Most cities and counties don't know this because they rely strictly on sole sourcing a multi-million dollar project and never even consider the Request For Proposal or competative bid process because they do not want to spend the time reviewing and researching the information the vendors submit. What a shame....

Very true, there a few independent non-paid consultants, my non-profit is one of them that assists government and other non-profits in finding communications solutions. Since we are a non-profit, we don't have a "dog in the fight" and are vendor impartial, our only interest is that of any taxpayer: to get the most for OUR tax money, because in the end: WE ALL PAY for the mistakes these officials make.

If the citizens do not hold their government accountable, than we get what we deserve. While I can buy that in many rural areas and outlying cities, there aren't paid staff who specialize in such systems, but we are talking about the 5 most affluent cities in the metro area, and at least 3 of them have paid staff who are SUPPOSED to know this stuff.

IMO one of the qualifications of any 911 director or radio systems person, at minimum, should be a technician class amateur radio license. Idealy, a GROL. They should be able to demonstrate a basic working knowledge of LMR, how repeaters work, should be able to tune a duplexer, perform basic RF interference troubleshooting, understand RF propagation, etc.

Is what I am asking alot? You betcha. But when we PAY people to do a job that requires them to manage these vital resources, isn't it prudent they have a pretty good knowledge of how the stuff works? too often it's just plain LAZINESS and ineptness that takes over. so much easier to make a phone call and make it someone else's problem, and let someone else pay for it.

Nowadays, this person also should have an IT background and be able to login to a router, perform traceroutes, etc. The buck stops at the people who are paid to make stuff work and keep it that way. Valuable employees who do gain the training and knowledge prove their weight in gold when it comes "crunch time", which depending on how far over the fiscal cliff we go, could mean the difference between keeping employement and even advancing, and being on the unemployment line.
 

Metrofire31

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I agree with the previous posts. I once had a boss who had one a small sign on his desk that read: "Those who say it can't be done are being surpassed by those who are doing it." In this case, with $millions and $millions of taxpayer resources at stake, "taking the easy way out" isn't an option. There are adequate technical resources around to give expert, unbiased opinions. If you truly want to find them, you will.
 
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