res148cue said:
My guess is that they are moving smaller towns to MIRS. Why I don't know.
If you remember Ken we we're told MIRS was not going to replace municipal radio systems already in place. Have they changed their mind.
I can't see the Comm Center absorbing a Morristown or even a Mount Olive for that matter.
I think this was in relation to those not being dispatched by the county already. I guess that some towns wanted to migrate sooner.
We were told last year that those agencies being dispatched by the county would be migrating to MIRS over the course of this year.
I can see the county dispatching for some of the other towns, but it would have to be in some way regionalized and the bigger (or busier) towns might have to have their own talkgroup.
There was a meeting with the county and municipal authorities to discuss the idea of a county dispatch center and the eventual consolidation of dispatch services.
At that point it was said that does not mean that all agencies would use MIRS.
You brought up Mt Olive. I could see our dispatch channel in some way patched to MIRS. It would be much more cost effective than buying 200 MIRS portables (or some other crazy number), when the system we have works and works well (even though Flanders has some issues, it would only be worse on MIRS) and the hardware is in place.
Many counties do county run dispatching well. What will be critical is that the end using agencies have a say. Not solely the politicians.
Last point.... I do NOT want to see any digital fireground channels. That would be a HUGE mistake. Many agencies are struggling and I don't think that should be the place to experiment. I'm even leary of a digital dispatch channel.