As usual everyone jumps straight to the subscriber cost argument without taking infrastructure costs into mind (or worse, more expensive scanner means the system must be awful). A properly maintained radio system with a reasonable expectation of coverage is expensive. Subscribers are expensive too, but that's what bonds, matching grants, and group buy orders are for. It's absolutely mind blowing to me that people are still using eBay to purchase radios used in IDLH environments and trusting out-dated non-maintained infrastructure. For a few hundred more you can get a bare-bones Motorola, Harris, or EFJ/Kenwood radio new with a warranty and reliable knowledge of where it came from.
To reign in my reply back to the topic at hand, I'm seeing several unique radio IDs in use on the dispatch talkgroups in Alexander last night and some this morning which leads me to believe that the county has already started some form of transition to 800. I'm not sure if this is a misunderstanding or if the county suddenly made a 180 but either way I would recommend following-up with more than one source and see what is really going on. Again it seems odd to go through the trouble to add console resources and full time patches and subscribers for no reason. I've heard on several occasions that "[insert county here] will never move to [insert radio system/technology/band here]" and usually the exact opposite happens or is actively in progress when the right people are asked. Also these migrations take time, some folks assume if there hasn't been forward motion in some time that it's a failed endeavor. Nothing moves fast in government, and it moves even slower when you're trying to do anything with a radio system.
TL;DR: trust but verify, especially when info is coming from a field-user. also don't buy used radios for dangerous situations.
