The County does not seem to have control of the Local Departments and they are doing what they want to do now. NJ is a Home Rule State and some Fire Company's are taking advantage of it. If you look at Camden County you do not see this.
At some point a civilian or a fire fighter will get seriously hurt and it will make the papers and then they will realize how bad it is...
To give you a good example a month ago Lambertville had a 3 alarm fire the Chief could not get a truck to charge a line as he was calling on Fire 9 and the Engine did not have a VHF radio as it was a Mutual Aid engine.So someone had to Run 2 blocks to tell him to charge it.
I am very familiar with the mind set in Lambertville as far as why they are doing what they are and it is through ill advice from a Ham radio Operator.
It's sad the stuff that they do.. Wasteful spending on unnecessary radios, which in turn will cause a FF related injury due to incompatible radios and honestly pure stupidity by the ones who are in charge of decisions like this. Somebody should take this up before the local council and do something about it.
I'm one for county control over Fire/EMS/Police Dispatching and County control over the radio systems they use. Look at Morris County, they have one of the most solid most organized radio plans I've ever seen. They have control over everything. They have predetermined ops channels that even the m/a units for towns that are not on the county system have access to due to the ONE radio that they have installed in there trucks. Something just doesn't seem right in hunterdon, somebody needs to step up and say enough is enough with this. Pouring money into useless things that in turn is just going to jeopardize the First Responders safety and ultimately the residents. Hunterdon Communications needs to completely regain control of everything related to the communications system and come up with one unified system, using one technology wether it be analog or digital (analog I'm assuming) and go with it. Instead of half assing and getting a new technology while still supporting an old dinosaur radio system which just runs into problems when supporting both. Forget about the simulcasting across multiple channels and get a "one site" system that the same channel is used wether your operating in the far south of the county as opposed to the extreme north of the county. County alerting needs to be done on a single channel that does not allow the keying up of any field radios and should be completely talk free unless its a page from county. IMO Hunterdon medics need there own dispatch channel, but that's up for argument as I'm not to familiar with them. Hunterdon really needs to get into the 21st century of radio communications and spending habits.