911 Board launching investigation into "barely legal" $40 million contract

MOBILE COUNTY, AL (WALA) -
A $40 million radio system contract with the Mobile County Communications District (MCCD), also known as the 911 Board, is set to be investigated by third-party auditors and law enforcement agents.

911 Board launching investigation into "barely legal" $40 millio

'This does not pass the sniff test': Mobile County 911 board investigates $40 million radio contract | AL.com

Not a single reply in 2 days? Nobody is the least bit concerned about this?

Its another MOTHEROLA boo hoo session... Been There, Done That.. Burned the Tee Shirt !!

dcr_inc said:

Its another MOTHEROLA boo hoo session... Been There, Done That.. Burned the Tee Shirt !!

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You do realize this system is by Harris....right ?

I am not really a fan of Harris, but if they delivered these radios to the customer but the customer chose not to install/use these radios, you can't blame Harris for that.

Harris did why they were asked to do. As much as I'd love to see Harris get beat up, in this case it's an internal issue within the county.

As far as the Harris vendor and the SMR he has on county tower sites...yea, they should have something in writing and compensate the county for the tower usage. Not feeling too sorry for the vendor.

Lol.
Nobody even cared enough to read the article.
And we wonder why these problems exist in the first place?

There seem to be three issues here.

First, the mobile radios have been waiting for the vehicles to be made available for install. On a guess, they are not backwards compatible with the EDACS system, so it would have made more sense for them to be delivered later. Then again, I've seen cases where equipment was bought when the money was available, but not installed for some time because of either budget or personnel constraints.

Second, Hurricane Communications just tried to carry over the old agreement with the tribe to use the tower. They probably didn't think much of it, but should have put something in writing and should have either issued a credit to the county or paid the county for use of the tower.

Third, the County apparently originally planned to go to Open Sky, but Harris isn't supporting that any more. Harris should credit the county for that.

Service contracts like the one mentioned in the article are sort of like insurance. Actually, they are insurance. You pay a flat fee to the radio shop (or whoever) for maintenance. If nothing breaks, the shop makes a lot of money, if something big breaks, it pays for itself. We did the same thing with our Motorola equipment until we were big enough to have our own radio shop.

Building a new system from the ground up, which is what seems to be going on here, is expensive and takes years. And there are going to be some cost ineffeciencies. That's the same for public and private systems.

I don't see that there is any huge scandal here.

I don't see the issue. Seems like the guy is just stirring the pot.
If the infrastructure is not in place, what is the point of installing the radio's. Maybe Harris should of held off on delivering the radio's until just before acceptance was scheduled.

I wonder who actually has legal possession of the radio's?

If hurricane is just storing them for Harris and the county has not actually taken possession of the radio's yet. I would say in this case the radio's warranty does not start until they are installed.

I as a company I would not want the responsibility of even one radio coming up missing or god forbid a fire, with the equipment in the building. If I was hurricane, come get your radio's we are not storing them, is what I would say.

Sadly, this happens quite often, especially when the government agency does not have a "contract/project manager" on staff or contracted to oversee things.

It sounds as though the county has had a long business relationship with the radio shop; hence the reason for the "barely legal" advertisement of the original bid. This allowed the local shop an advantage in that they probably knew it was coming well before the advertisement and was able to pass it along to Harris whom they are a dealer for. At any rate, I doubt that the local shop or Harris is at fault and it's moreover a case of the board member not getting his way. Just my 2 cents.......

I find it interesting that the Alabama First Responder P25 Towers and transmitters are installed and ready for use in Mobile County and the 911 Board went out and bought out dealers old inventory and used equipment to keep the current system up and running. Makes me wonder !


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