Minnesota ARMER expansion into Cass Co, ND

[davef3138]

It looks like there's talk of expanding Minnesota's ARMER system into Cass County/Fargo, ND area. This is a first for the ARMER system. There are some cross-border agencies that have participation agreements, but it would be the first time an entire neighboring county would be migrating entirely onto the system.

Apparently the Fargo-Moorhead area is unique in that Fargo actually does the dispatching for both sides of the river. This will greatly enhance operations between the two cities.



Starts on page 18:

https://dps.mn.gov/entity/secb/List...ents/381/OTC-meeting-materials-2017-08-08.pdf

 

[10then34]

Apparently the Fargo-Moorhead area is unique in that Fargo actually does the dispatching for both sides of the river. This will greatly enhance operations between the two cities.

Red River Dispatch is an entity based on a joint powers agreement entered into by
The City of Fargo, ND
The City of West Fargo, ND
The City of Moorhead, MN
The County of Clay, MN
The County of Cass, ND
It is governed by a board made up of the different fire and police chiefs with chairmanship moving back and forth across the river every year.
So while the dispatch center is physically located in Fargo, it is run as one big happy family ;-) Everything is pretty integrated, cops are cross-credentialed in both jurisdictions and things like SWAT are run as a joint operation.

As to merits of tying into tie into the MN system, I have no knowledge or opinion on the merits. It probably offers organizational and financial benefits to hitch yourself to a larger system. Many of the small counties in ND (which are most of them) leave it to 'State Radio' to dispatch for them. I don't know what if any projects are going on at that level to move the systems forward.

 

[davef3138]

It sounds like there's _very_ signficant cost savings to them in being able to piggyback onto the existing ARMER zone controller in Detroit Lakes, MN. In exchange, Cass County intends on paying their share of that zone controller's ongoing maintenance costs. Then factor in how integrated the entities in those two counties are, it sounds like a definite win-win for everyone involved.

Standing up a separate P25 trunking system for the North Dakota side would have been more complicated. The way I understand it, the MCC 7500 dispatch consoles can't connect directly into two separate systems. There's ways to link the systems together, but there's caveats to that and probably a bunch of Motorola licensing costs as well.