I hope those of you in the Habersham area dialed in to the special Board of Commissioners meeting this afternoon. It was interesting, to say the least. Very clear that absolutely nothing specific has been decided or "approved", and they are considering 4 different options to include in the SPLOST that will be submitted to voters. In fact, no matter what they decide, it is all dependent on that SPLOST VII vote in November anyway. They aren't sure whether they'd propose staying on VHF or going to 800, whether they'd use the Hall County core or develop their own, or other things, even if the money is ultimately approved. More to come.
Plenty of the usual misstatements that occur at meetings with "experts" like this... Some of my favorites were the statements that White County is not on VHF (yes they are) so the single-band radios Habersham has now aren't compatible with White County (yes they are), that new P25 radios would allow them to communicate with White and Banks counties (no they won't; switching from MotoTRBO to P25 will actually cause them to LOOSE direct subscriber access to White's DMR repeaters, and do nothing to gain access to Banks' NXDN system), and stuff like that. These meetings are always hard for knowledgeable hobbyists to listen to.
Anyway, although absolutely nothing specific has been decided yet, and nothing can be funded without the voters approving SPLOST VII in November anyway, the writing seems to be on the wall - if the voters approve the SPLOST, Habersham is going to find a way to spend millions on a P25 system of some sort.