Zip 11735 and the NY data base

[Chauffeur6]

Originally Posted by sjman79

I keep a close eye on the Nassau section, and agree that straight alphabetical might be better. But, I think there is a system in place, based on how fire protection is administered in NY State. Municipalities (cities/inc. villages) must provide protection and may have their own departments or contract out. Those departments run by cities/villages are under the municipalities section. Fire districts are under the local fire section. Independent fire companies are in the other fire/ems section. So, by type of fire protection entity-municipal department, fire district or independent fire company, the listing is logical. It is not overly helpful to someone just looking for frequencies, and for whom such details are likely irrelevant. And, in fact, there are a few misplaced entries based even on that system, which I could submit separately (e.g. Valley Stream is an incorporated village, while Wantagh is a hamlet with a fire district.)

After a quick look, it seems that the same system was applied to Suffolk. I'm not sure how well the system was followed in other NY counties, or if in fact this classification was actually used, but it seems to me to be the case and largely correct for that classification system.

There really is no rhyme or reason to the way it is. I spent the last two months attempting to reorganize the entire state. I completed my "first pass" which was to get all the countywide stuff in its own category, followed by the municipalities. This is now standardized for every county in the state (outside of NYC, of course).

However in some counties, the Local Fire/EMS sections remain a bit of a mess. This is the case with both LI counties. My plan is to go through all of these as part of my "second pass" through each county. The tricky part is that many Fire Districts/Fire Protection Districts are not always contained neatly within a single municipal entity's borders. Many of these districts span town, village or hamlet lines. For the most part village fire departments are contained within the village borders, however some provide protection outside the village into a neighboring hamlet or unincorporated area.

That, of course, makes it tricky to assign an FD entry to a municipality. Unless it's known for a fact that the particular FD does not provide protection beyond the borders of that particular municipal entity, having them listed in the Local Fire/EMS section is the best solution.

The listings under Local Fire/EMS are sorted alphabetically in the database, as they should be. I just checked the mobile site and notice that they are not sorted alphabetically, nor are they sorted by frequency either. I'm not sure why it's like that on the mobile site, that's something Lindsay will have to look into.

As I told Dave already in this thread, I have all of this on my To-Do list, I just need to set some time aside to work on it. Patience, my friends.

[dave3825]

Originally Posted by Chauffeur6

Many of these districts span town, village or hamlet lines. For the most part village fire departments are contained within the village borders, however some provide protection outside the village into a neighboring hamlet or unincorporated area.

Do you have an example of this? I thought Farmingdale Fire was responsible for Farmingdale. East Farmingdale fd was responsible for East Farmingdale. Bethpage fd is responsible for Bethpage. Pretty much every town has a fire department with possibly excluding Gordon Heights.

Originally Posted by Chauffeur6

That, of course, makes it tricky to assign an FD entry to a municipality. Unless it's known for a fact that the particular FD does not provide protection beyond the borders of that particular municipal entity, having them listed in the Local Fire/EMS section is the best solution.

Should the fire depts be listed separately under municipality or should all fire departments be listed together? Thats a good question. And as far as the few municipalities listed, they basically consist of a police, code enforcement town services public works and some fire depts. Why not instead of listing municipalities the way it is now, have sections for the data making up these entries. When you click Suffolk county and start scrolling down, the first entry is Law Enforcement. The only thing listed there, is Suffolk county trs. Why not list Amityvlle PD, E Hampton PD, Greenport PD etc . There are 17 police departments listed separately under municipalities when they could and should be under the Law Enforcement heading..

Then under fire, list all the fire departments. Seems like better organization to me. Cause having a heading "law enforcement" and only listing scpd seems silly when there are 17 other police departments further down on the same page..

Then even further down under Schools and Universities, it only lists one Hospital Helipad at stonybrook university. There should be something there telling people that Suny Stonybrook, Suny Farmingdale and Suffolk Community Collage all have campus police/public safety operating on the scpd trs..

Originally Posted by Chauffeur6

I just checked the mobile site and notice that they are not sorted alphabetically, nor are they sorted by frequency either.

As seen here, with the exception of the first freq, 470.67500 they are in ascending freq order.

Fire Districts

[/QUOTE]

Don't take this post as me being impatient, just pointing out what I feel could be better...

[dave3825]

Double post, please delete..

[Chauffeur6]

Originally Posted by dave3825

Do you have an example of this? I thought Farmingdale Fire was responsible for Farmingdale. East Farmingdale fd was responsible for East Farmingdale. Bethpage fd is responsible for Bethpage. Pretty much every town has a fire department with possibly excluding Gordon Heights.

I was speaking generally for all of NYS, not just out on the island. If it happens that every FD in Nassau/Suffolk fits neatly into a little box that coincides with the town or village, that's great. In that case I can basically eliminate the "Local Fire/EMS" categories and put each FD/EMS listing into its respective municipality.

But that begs the question, are there no unincorporated areas of either county, such as hamlets, that are covered by an FD whose primary coverage area is largely within one municipality, but extends out to that unincorporated area? If so, then those FD's can't be shoehorned into a single Municipality listing, it will cause confusion for those unfamiliar with the area.

Originally Posted by dave3825

Should the fire depts be listed separately under municipality or should all fire departments be listed together? Thats a good question. And as far as the few municipalities listed, they basically consist of a police, code enforcement town services public works and some fire depts. Why not instead of listing municipalities the way it is now, have sections for the data making up these entries. When you click Suffolk county and start scrolling down, the first entry is Law Enforcement. The only thing listed there, is Suffolk county trs. Why not list Amityvlle PD, E Hampton PD, Greenport PD etc . There are 17 police departments listed separately under municipalities when they could and should be under the Law Enforcement heading..

Then under fire, list all the fire departments. Seems like better organization to me. Cause having a heading "law enforcement" and only listing scpd seems silly when there are 17 other police departments further down on the same page..

Because that's not how the DB is supposed to be setup, per the guidelines we follow in the DB Admin Handbook. You are free to download and review the Handbook for yourself, that should clear up any questions you have about how the structure of the database is to be organized.

Database Administrator Handbook - The RadioReference Wiki

In fact, the whole point of me going through every county in NYS was to reorganize everything so it met the current guidelines. Prior to it was a big mess, along with way too much localized customizations. Having local county level admins is great for verifying local info, however when they start to customize "their" county just to please themselves or a handful of locals, that's a problem. No one or two counties in the state has any special standing where it should deviate from the established database-wide guidelines.

The "Related TRS" note under Suffolk County Law Enforcement noting that SCPD operates on that system is also database policy. You asked a while back why that note was also under the Suffolk County Fire section. The answer is that the TRS has TG's listed for Fire, which means there may be countywide FD activity on the TRS. Hence the notation.

In a nutshell, the county pages should be organized as such:

County Agencies
- Law Enforcement
- Fire
- EMS
- Services

Municipalities
- Town A
--- Town A Police
--- Town A Fire
- Town B
--- Town B Police
--- Town B Highway
- Town C
--- Town C Police
--- Town C EMS
- Village B
--- Village B Police
--- Village B Fire
--- Village B DPW

Local Fire/EMS
- Fire
--- ABC Fire District (whose coverage area spans both Town B and Town C in the above example)
- EMS
--- DEF Ambulance Service (who operates in several towns)

Originally Posted by dave3825

Then even further down under Schools and Universities, it only lists one Hospital Helipad at stonybrook university. There should be something there telling people that Suny Stonybrook, Suny Farmingdale and Suffolk Community Collage all have campus police/public safety operating on the scpd trs.

This is a separate issue entirely. If the data is not submitted, then nothing will be listed. If you have confirmed frequency or TG info for these campuses, submit it and it will be added. If there simply needs to be a Related TRS note added, that info should be submitted also so it can be added.

Originally Posted by dave3825

As seen here, with the exception of the first freq, 470.67500 they are in ascending freq order.

Fire Districts

If you look at the Other Fire/EMS listing on the mobile site, you'll see that they are sorted neither alphabetically nor by frequency.

Other Fire/EMS

Actually, I just figured out what is going on as I was typing this. The full site is honoring the "Sort by Description" function, however the mobile site is honoring the sort order #'s that only the admins see. All of the Fire Districts were set to sort order 99 which means they will automatically sort by Frequency on the mobile site, the exception was that 470.675 frequency which was set to 1 for some reason, hence it being at the top of the listing above all the 99's. The Other Fire/EMS are a real mess of sort #'s varying from 1 to 99 in no particular order. I'll have to change them all to 99, which will sort them by Frequency on the mobile site when I'm finished (they will remain sorted by Description on the full site as currently is the case).

This looks like a bug, which I will enter into our bug ticket system for Lindsay to look at. The mobile site should be honoring the same sort as the full site.

Originally Posted by dave3825

Don't take this post as me being impatient, just pointing out what I feel could be better...

Which is fine, however please realize based upon everything I've laid out in this post that there are specific guidelines we follow. As a statewide admin, my concern is that every county in NY follows the same guidelines.

[Chauffeur6]

Some further points about the organization of categories and subcategories, and why things are the way they are.

Geotagging.

Subcategories are assigned LAT/LONG/Range, which GPS enabled scanners make use of. If we were to lump every police dept in a county into a single subcategory, the geotagging would be useless. You'd essentially have every subcategory assigned the same 50 mile countywide radius, rather than defining much more localized ranges.

The subcategories under the County category (Law Enforcement, Fire, EMS, Services) are all geotagged using the center of the county and with a range spanning the entire county.

Under the Municipalities category, each subcategory (town/village) can be assigned a much smaller range. Before anyone points out the obvious, none of these ranges are yet defined in Suffolk, or most counties for that matter. Trust me, it's also on my To-Do list.

Let's take a look at Rockland County for examples.

Here we see the Countywide subcategories, using a LAT/LONG that is roughly the center of the county, together with a 12 mile radius that encompasses the entire county.

Rockland County Law Enforcement

Now we take a look at a subcategory within Municipalities, the town of Clarkstown. Note how we've shrunk the range down to just a 5 mile radius

Clarkstown

We'll drill down even further to the Village of Spring Valley, which is just a 1.5 mile radius

Spring Valley

However now we run into the issue where a Fire District's coverage area goes beyond any of the municipal boundaries of the towns or villages. Hillcrest FD covers a large area of the center of the county in three different towns. So we create a separate subcategory for them under the Local Fire/EMS category.

Hillcrest Fire


Having a single subcategory with a ton of FD/EMS entries like Nassau and Suffolk currently have defeats the entire purpose of the geotagging feature. Which is why, going back to Rockland as the example, we put any FD frequencies that are unique to a particular municipality within that municipalities subcategory (Piermont, Suffern, West Haverstraw), while we establish separate subcategories under the Local Fire/EMS category for the ones that extend beyond established Municipality borders.

Rockland County


If we leave all those FD/EMS entries in two single subcategories in Nassau/Suffolk, we'd have to use the entire county's range, rather than breaking them down. That is why we will use Rockland as the model, and move any FD/EMS that corresponds exactly to Municipal boundaries into those subcategories, and create new subcategories under Local Fire/EMS for the ones that need to stand on their own.

Again, these are not my ideas. This is all based on the established guidelines and procedures laid out in the DB Handbook, as well as policies that have been hashed out over the years among the RR higher ups. No matter what the polices are, there will always be some segment of the population that does not agree, and has a "better" way of doing things. That's just human nature, but in this case with this database, "that's just kind of the way it is" to borrow Lindsay's quote from above.

[Chauffeur6]

If you guys on the island want to help get this cleaned up, you can start by going through the entries in the Local Fire/EMS category (Fire Districts and Other Fire/EMS subcategories) and start figuring out which FD/EMS agencies fit neatly into a town or village municipality. Those will be moved up to their respective municipality listing. The ones that remain, ones that span outside a town or village into unincorporated areas or hamlets, will get their own subcategories under Local Fire/EMS.

It will be a lot easier for me to accomplish this with local help, but I will get it done on my own soon enough if that's what it takes.

[dave3825]

Originally Posted by Chauffeur6

I was speaking generally for all of NYS, not just out on the island. If it happens that every FD in Nassau/Suffolk fits neatly into a little box that coincides with the town or village, that's great. In that case I can basically eliminate the "Local Fire/EMS" categories and put each FD/EMS listing into its respective municipality.

But that begs the question, are there no unincorporated areas of either county, such as hamlets, that are covered by an FD whose primary coverage area is largely within one municipality, but extends out to that unincorporated area? If so, then those FD's can't be shoehorned into a single Municipality listing, it will cause confusion for those unfamiliar with the area.

I'm not sure that applies here. Suffolk has about 25 municipalities. Then there’s the about 70 regular towns. The fire dept listed for a town fights fires in that town. They also get requested by another town for mutual aid to its town.

Originally Posted by Chauffeur6

In a nutshell, the county pages should be organized as such:

County Agencies
- Law Enforcement
- Fire
- EMS
- Services

Municipalities
- Town A
--- Town A Police
--- Town A Fire
- Town B
--- Town B Police
--- Town B Highway
- Town C
--- Town C Police
--- Town C EMS
- Village B
--- Village B Police
--- Village B Fire
--- Village B DPW

Local Fire/EMS
- Fire
--- ABC Fire District (whose coverage area spans both Town B and Town C in the above example)
- EMS
--- DEF Ambulance Service (who operates in several towns)

Ok In Suffolk, there are about 25 Municipalities properly listed that seem to have fire, police,ems,and code enforcement, as to the guide lines you list.

There are around 70 fire depts in the fire section that are just fire departments. These also have very little other entities associated with them. Like Hauppauge, there's a listing for Hauppauge fire, but Hauppauge does not have its own police, code enforcement, or town services listed . The same holds true for most of the other 70 towns in Suffolk County. The ones that do are mostly the ones in the municipalities section.

So are you saying that you are going to make a "Town/Village" section for every town even if the info listed on RR.com is a just a fire department?

Because then as far as fire departments go, the could also be listed by division. For example. Islip division 3 consists of 20 something different fire depts as seen here on Phils, W2lie's site. Then at least that way, if someone traveling to Islip NY wanted to look up or web import all islip related fire, then all these listed in division 3 would actually show up Islip and under zip code 11730...

Originally Posted by Chauffeur6

The "Related TRS" note under Suffolk County Law Enforcement noting that SCPD operates on that system is also database policy. You asked a while back why that note was also under the Suffolk County Fire section. The answer is that the TRS has TG's listed for Fire, which means there may be countywide FD activity on the TRS. Hence the notation. This is a separate issue entirely. If the data is not submitted, then nothing will be listed. If you have confirmed frequency or TG info for these campuses, submit it and it will be added. If there simply needs to be a Related TRS note added, that info should be submitted also so it can be added.

Yes, I know this. The TRS also has TG's listed for Schools and Universities. My question was, why is there is no mention/notation of any Schools and Universities listed in the Trs under the heading "Schools and Universities"? There is nothing informing people that this info is contained within the County Trs. I have submitted the ticket to have the note added to the schools section..

[DaveNF2G]

The DB Admin guidelines specify setting up the listings in a manner that is not consistent with either the way the entities are organized in New York State or the way people use scanners.