Rice/Steele Counties ARMER article

[rastab]

Here is an article about the eventual transition of Rice/Steele counties to ARMER:



Counties, cities prep for radio upgrade
By: JIM HAMMERAND, Staff Writer
Posted: Friday, July 17, 2009 11:08 pm
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NORTHFIELD — Cities across Rice County are girding for a multi-million dollar emergency communications project mandated by the federal government.

The Rice County Board of Commissioners voted in June to proceed with a $7.7 million upgrade to an 800 MHz radio system that will let firefighters, police and dispatchers communicate with clarity and reliability.

It’s a joint endeavor between Rice and Steele counties, which share an emergency dispatch center in Owatonna and together used 238 radios for emergency response as of last count.

The city councils of Northfield, Lonsdale and Dundas all recommended full implementation of the county’s project, discarding cheaper options, like using a hodge-podge of old and new technology in the short term.

In 2013, the FCC will force departments using VHF band radios — like those currently in use in Rice County — to 800 MHz for better communication, and agencies across the nation have formed a shared network on that frequency. Interoperability has been on law enforcement officials’ minds since Sept. 11, when the responding agencies in the terror attack on the World Trade Center towers found they could not communicate with each other easily.

Northfield Police Chief Mark Taylor said his city has delayed replacement of aging equipment with the federal mandate in mind.

“A lot of our portable radios and our squad car radios — and in the fire department, same thing pretty much — it’s all reaching that age where it needs to be replaced, and that’s a significant investment,” he said. “We’d end up throwing all that equipment away.”




Two hybrid options, estimated to cost $3.2 million to $4.2 million, would not have let local agencies use the statewide Allied Radio Matrix for Emergency Response system.

Rice County Sheriff Richard Cook said the ARMER system will let Rice County agencies communicate with the State Patrol, neighboring counties, Faribault’s state prison and the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

“We’d be kind of an island on VHF if we didn’t start to at least initiate that transition,” Cook said. “We border counties where we communicate with them on a regular basis. There’s a lot of mutual aid between all agencies.”

Digital radios would provide crystal clear transmissions from 95 percent of the county, Cook said. A new 800 MHz tower in northern Rice County, most likely Dundas, would fill an anticipated coverage hole.

Though each Rice County city has signed off on the transition, many details are still murky.

“Now it’s just the point of how you’re going to fund it, how you’re going to implement it and what kind of stages you’re talking about,” he said. “That has yet to be determined.”

State grants have been made available for the upgrade, and Rice County plans to bond the project and collect debt payments from its cities. County Administrator Gary Weiers said planning will take months, and implementation years.

“Since bonding for the project is still some time away we have not had substantive discussions with the cities to know how many will elect that option,” he wrote in an e-mail. “We are in the early stages of a long project.”

At the beginning of a 2 to 10 p.m. shift Thursday, Lonsdale Police Chief Jason Schmitz said radios are lifelines in dangerous situations, and that failures lurk in the back of officers’ heads.

“In certain buildings we don’t get reception,” he said. “If you have a robbery in a building and you can’t communicate with dispatch, that’s an officer safety issue.

Scanners that are not 800 MHz compliant will not monitor traffic on the upgraded system. 800 MHz scanners are available to consumers.

— Jim Hammerand covers the city. He can be reached at jhammerand@northfieldnews.com or 645-1114.



WHAT’S THE COST?

Estimated system costs:

ARMER system: $2,620,000

800 MHz radio upgrades

Northfield: $304,800

Dundas: $29,200

Lonsdale: $130,600

Faribault: $678,000

Morristown: $137,000

Nerstrand: $59,800

Rice County: $716,400 (plus $736,000 for new Dundas tower)

Steele County: $2,297,800

Steele County cities: $1,652,000

Total Cost: $7,709,600

Source: Rice-Steele County implementation study

[vf702]

Interesting. I had heard that Rice County wanted to go ARMER, but Steele County did not. They must have seen the light at the end of the tunnel.

[techsender]

I find it interesting that it is being reported that the FCC will "force" the agencies to 800 mhz. Not so.

[N0YFE]

Originally Posted by techsender

I find it interesting that it is being reported that the FCC will "force" the agencies to 800 mhz. Not so.

I noticed that also since the only item they would be required to change is to transistion to a narrowband FM system. Though depending on the costs and equipment changes that would be needed they may be in a better position to transition to ARMER.

[vf702]

I think that a lot of counties are weighing costs to upgrade to narrowband operation versus going onto the ARMER system. Narrowbanding may be a little bit less expensive, but no one wants to be in a communications island. The ARMER system is going to grow very quickly in the next few years.

[techsender]

When you look at the associated costs of going to an 800 mhz trunked system vs narrowband VHF Hi or UHF there is a large difference. With the legacy systems most of the infrastructure is in place with known coverage areas. Narrowbanding frees up more channels in the band. Agencies could stay on vhf hi with narrowbanding and double their channels and keep coverage that they have and know. In our terrain / population density VHF Hi is most of the time the better choice than 800 mhz. To get good 800 mhz coverage look at the tower costs, most counties are really beefing up the infrastructure due to the coverage of 800 mhz. For urban areas 800 may be a better choice but most of the state VHF Hi would probably be the better choice. VHF trunking isnt that hard to implement and would be pretty cost effective. The communications island factor is there, I will admit that.

[mmtstc]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8330/4.5.0.77 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

North ambulance in faribault and northfield ambulance are already using ARMER fulltime in rice county...

[vf702]

Northfield Ambulance has been on ARMER for many years. EMS agencies used to have to maintain radios towers wherever they had service. With ARMER, once they have a dispatch center, they can spread all over the place using the system for free.