Ridgefield CT: Motorola, town officials show off radio system to school board

If taxpayers vote to approve a $3.7-million townwide emergency radio communication system this spring, the schools will be lined up to hook into it as soon as next summer — as long as the district can pony up another $400,000 in the following year’s budget.
That’s the message the Board of Education received during a presentation led by police Chief John Roche, Deputy Emergency Manager Dick Aarons, and Rachel Johnson of Motorola, which would be implementing the system.



“We tailored it to when the town’s ready,” said Craig Tunks, the district’s director of technology, who also presented the proposal.

• More budget 2015-16 news from The Ridgefield Press

“Our system will be ready to go three months after the town’s system is in place,” he said. “Our goal is to be fully operational by the 2016-17 school year — around September or October 2016.”
Of course, that’s if the capital item goes through this year and voters then approve an additional $400,000 next spring for the schools to hook up to the new equipment.
“It’s a bit of a step ladder approach,” Chief Roche explained. “Phase I, the foundation of the system, has already been completed at our dispatch center at headquarters. Phase II will begin this summer, if the voters approve it, and it will be completed next summer with the schools climbing on. …
“There are some advantages of getting that money delayed,” he added, referencing the Board of Selectmen’s non-binding recommendation to ax the $400,000 capital item for the schools from this year’s proposed budget.
Several board members disagreed, leading to a 20-minute discussion about what could have been during the 2015-16 school year had the money not been deferred to next year’s budget.
“We could have done quite a bit with this system if we had been given the money,” argued board member Karen Sulzinsky. “It’s upsetting that we now have to wait a whole year before we can even get started.”
Chairman Austin Drukker wanted to keep the dialogue centered on the new technology and what it would mean for the schools.
“It will replace the day-to-day, inter-building communications that we struggle with all the time,” said Mr. Tunks.
“There will be no more Radio Shack radios,” he said. “These are the real deal.”

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Dave520 said:

Chris,
The article mentions that it will be Mototrbo. Could there be another license in process for that? The FCC link above does not show any emission designator for Mototrbo. Will be interesting to see how this plays out with the funding!

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Big firefighter gloves fumbling with tiny knobs and buttons. Wearing five incompatible radios at the scene of an emergency. Garbled transmissions and weak signals in many areas of town. Lack of communication between Ridgefield’s different departments and with the state.

Those are the headaches that a $3.7-million radio system upgrade would fix, said Dick Aarons, the town’s deputy emergency manager and chairman of the Public Safety Radio Upgrade Task Force that has spent the last two years putting the plan together.

The most significant benefit of the new system would be emergency responders’ ability to communicate with each other and dispatch from inside most houses anywhere in town — which isn’t possible now, Aarons said.

More budget coverage from The Ridgefield Press
“This is especially important for police officers and medics who find that form of communications difficult in large patches of our community, including areas of Ridgebury, Farmingville, St. John’s, West Mountain, and Bennetts Farm,” Aarons said.

The project has been reviewed and approved by the Board of Police Commissioners, the Fire Commission, the Parks and Recreation Commission, the school board, the Board of Selectmen, and the Board of Finance. It goes to voters on Tuesday, May 12.

A new network

It’s more than walkie-talkies. The proposal is to build a new, more reliable network.

Even though it’s thought of as a radio system, the current network relies on telephone lines that have proven vulnerable during storms. There are receivers around town that pick up relatively weak transmissions from mobile radios and send them back to dispatch centers.

The new “simulcast” network would replace those telephone line connections with direct microwave links between the transmitter/receiver sites.

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