From the Independence/Blue Springs Examiner...
By Mike Ekey
The Examiner
While roll call is normally taken at the beginning of each council meeting, at Monday's study session, Police spokesman Tom Gentry conducted the roll call from the Independence Center on the city's newest radio system.
As Gentry called the roll from the food court of the center - something not possible with the current radio system - each council member responded through one of the new 700 MHz portable radios brought to the meeting for a demonstration of the new system.
"Read you five by five, here," Council member Jim Page, a former police officer, said as Gentry called his name for the roll.
The new system, purchased with money from the Department of Homeland Security and matched by the city, puts Independence at the forefront of public communications technology.
"This is the first 700 MHz radio station in place today," Assistant City Manager Larry Kaufman said in his presentation to the council. "It is the best and most well designed system we could have asked for."
The system, built by Motorola, cost about $10 million dollars to build the seven relay towers and install, but with grant money from homeland security and from the state, the city only spent a fraction of the cost.
"We really got a $10 million system for only $1.8 million," Kaufman said.
Along with increased range and signal strength, the new system can tap into communication from around the state in an emergency situation to coordinate responses with multiple cities. All city employees as well as police and fire will be switched to the new system by September.
Page, who spent 30 years as a police officer, recalled a time when the city's radio system - severely outdated - would sometimes pick up signals from Columbia.
"We had one cloudy night when we picked up a skipped signal that was dispatching an officer to go help a cat in a tree," Page said, "It took us a while to realize that it was coming all the way from Columbia."
Page applauded the city for working with a number of different agencies - including the Missouri Highway Patrol, U.S. Army and other municipalities - to install the network of towers and communications equipment around the region.
