Looks to me like WNC has got it's ducks in a row as far as a coordinated digital migration goes. Some key points here worth mentioning:
-- Swain, Cherokee, & Clay Sheriffs Offices are NXDN, meaning interop is more easily attained across the counties. I imagine the same vendor is providing service, so the information is there...it's whether or not the Sheriff wants neighboring agencies programmed in his radios or not. That is a problem that will exist regardless of mode or encryption. Many also fail to remember that all of these radios will do analog...at least they're staying VHF.
-- Mixed mode programming is in use, meaning analog users can talk to the sheriff units on the same frequency during incidents and be heard, and deputies can talk back by just by switching over to the analog mode.
-- Newer digital radio infrastructure makes networking repeaters much easier, which is a necessity in mountainous terrain where more than one repeater is needed to cover a county.
-- Western Carolina Communications & North Georgia Communications, among other vendors, have been expanding coverage of DMR & NXDN a lot recently, so they are gaining experience in supporting these new technologies.
-- Future 6.25 kHz compliance has already been met, so no need to worry about new radios in the next decade; just keep rotating out the radios that are broken/lost.
-- Price point. NXDN is a hell of a lot cheaper than 800 trunked, that's for sure. I imagine the county could have bought all new radios and infrastructure brand new and still had money left over compared to spending several thousand on VIPER portables. The County also maintains ownership of their own system, a huge selling point for those power-hungry officials that have everything to hide.
-- Encryption is standard in these radios, and it's law enforcement, why not use it? Personally, unless I'm talking on ham frequencies, all of my radios are set to Ø, it doesn't matter if I'm giving out my phone number over the air or discussing which place we're going to eat dinner; I have the ability to do it, so why not?
On a related note, are you sure your county is encrypted or just digital? Many people get the two mixed up; I notice you reference EDACS as being unmonitorable in your blog post which isn't the case.
As I hope you can see, very little of this has to do with paranoia. I'm proud of the mountain agencies keeping up with the newer technology and spending their money wisely; you know as well as I do that considering the terrain and population, the western counties have it quite a bit harder making things work compared to the larger cities towards the central part of the state.
Reference the Swain County migration:
http://forums.radioreference.com/no...267978-problem-swain-co-sheriff-dispatch.html