Inyo County currently communicates on a decades old radio system that consists of mountain top radio repeater sites, handheld and mobile radios, and a dispatching console. Our county, with its mountainous terrain and expansive square mileage, presents unique and costly radio system design challenges that require us to utilize many mountain top repeaters, as well as radio and microwave links to transmit radio signals to the far reaches of our boundaries.
In recent years, especially in recent months, we have seen the performance and reliability of our current radio system in drastic decline. Our current radio technicians do not believe our current system will make to the end of the year before a catastrophic, complete, system failure occurs. We currently do not have reliable or acceptable performance radio communication with our deputies in the Desert beat or the Tecopa Volunteer Fire Department. Recently there have been numerous, multiple-week, outages where our current radio system has been down in the desert leaving deputies, fire and ambulance service with no means of communication to be dispatched to calls or contact Dispatch for help. Our current microwave system has been unreliable and offering poor performance. Additionally, we have been plagued with system outages at our Silver Peak repeater station which covers the northern part of the county including Bishop and Round Valley. Repairs and service calls to radio technicians have been costly and occurring almost weekly.
Your Board, approved a contract with Mobile Relay Associates (MRA), to provide two-way radio service to the County. Since that approval, MRA has installed a radio repeater at the Sheriffs Administrative Building, further increasing the MRA network coverage in the Owens Valley.
Additionally, the Sheriff’s Office has deployed handheld and mobile radios to the resident deputies in Death Valley. Historically, the Sheriff’s Office has struggled to provide solid two-way radio communication between our Death Valley assets and the Sheriffs Dispatch Center. The end user feedback on MRA radio network performance and reliability from the resident deputies has been exceptional.
The Sheriff’s Office has also deployed several handheld and mobile radios to deputies assigned throughout the Owens Valley. The Owens Valley end users have also been impressed with capabilities of the MRA system.
With your Board's approval, the Sheriff’s Office seeks to continue to the next phase of this project. The next phase of the project includes purchase and installation of dispatching consoles that are compatible with both the MRA system and our legacy VHF system. It is still our intention to continue to use two channels of the legacy VHF system, one for dispatching county fire assets and one to use as a county back up radio channel. Also included in this phase, is the purchase and installation of mobile radios for the Sheriff's Office, Probation Office and Southern Inyo Fire Protection District. This phase also includes the purchase of portable radios for the Probation Office, and District Attorney's Office.
An upcoming phase will also refresh remaining legacy VHF equipment at mountain top sites, including the transition from the Tecopa microwave link to an IP link to improve reliability.
Completion of this phase will allow the County to begin taking excess repeater sites down, discontinue use of the State microwave link and reduce currently high repair costs.
With the completion of this phase, the County will need to increase monthly radio service subscriptions from 150 (current contract) to up to 250 at $26.50 per radio, per month (up to $6,625.00 per month max total) to accommodate the addition of Probation, District Attorney's Office and Southern Inyo Fire Protection District. These monthly expenses will be budgeted in the Sheriff's Budget with an offsetting revenue from the Criminal Justice-Realignment Budget for the Probation and District Attorney radios and an offsetting revenue from HHS for the Southern Inyo Fire Protection District radios.
With a sole-source agreement between Inyo County and MRA, we would utilize an all-inclusive, full-service, modern radio solution that could easily be scaled county wide. As the system takes the place of the County's existing radio infrastructure, significant cost savings will be recognized through out the County as repeater leases and maintenance will no longer be necessary.
