North Fulton County Radio Situation
MTS2000des,
I appreciate and understand your feedback, but the fact of the matter is if the residents of North Fulton continue to petition the State Legislature to re-establish Milton County, which is where I think they are headed, and this passes this will all be a moot point because Fulton County will not need coverage in that area any longer. If reborn, Milton County will be in the same type situation as Cobb, DeKalb, Gwinnett and others you mentioned and it will not be a "duplication of services" (I will address duplication of services a little more later in this post). I think if Fulton County had not continued to put off replacing one of the oldest Motorola 800 MHz Analog Smartnet II Trunked Radio Systems in the State when their vendor kept telling them to because the system had reached it's end of life then the cities in North Fulton County and South Fulton County would not be in this predicament. Dissatisfaction with county government, such as mismanagement of critical systems and infrastructure like the radio system to name only one, is only one of the many, many reasons we see cities like Sandy Springs, Johns Creek, Milton, Chattahoochee Hills, Dunwoody, Brookhaven and others being formed in Fulton and DeKalb Counties. We all know this issue of new cities being formed to have more control over local government is not just an issue for North Fulton residents. I am totally surprised that with all of the continued controversy in Clayton County that we haven't seen more cities formed down there or at least the expansion of the existing cities like Forest Park, Jonesboro, Morrow, Riverdale, etc., but I guess the citizens down there just don't follow local county government as much as they do in other areas.
Based on what you have indicated it sounds as if you live in Cobb County since you indicate you listen to CCPD PCT 3, Smyrna PD, etc. and you make is sound as if everything is hunky-dory and all of the cities get along just fine with the County and are happy with everything the County says and does. Now, I don't have an inside connection to know exactly what goes on in Cobb County government and between the six cities in the County, but I have a really hard time believing that everything between these six cities and the County is swell. I did not suggest that the cities of Acworth, Kennesaw or Smyrna don't benefit from being on the Cobb County Network, so don't accuse me of being short sighted. I think you will need to ask the police officials in Acworth, Kennesaw and Smyrna that question to see what they truly believe and have to say about that. I will tell you I have a friend who is a Smyrna Police Officer and he constantly complaints about the coverage of the Cobb County Astro Digital System because they virtually have no portable coverage on the south end of Smyrna and he is quick to say they did not have this problem when they were on the County's analog system. Can't wait to hear what he has to say about it if Cobb County migrates to Phase II and doesn't add any tower sites. To add fuel to the fire, he tells me Cobb County is wanting to move to Phase II and will not be putting a SPLOST before the voters like they did when they migrated to P25 Phase I, so this leaves all of the users on the system to come up with their own funding mechanism to replace every radio they are using now (sounds great, doesn't it?). I'm sure Smyrna could easily cough up $1.5 million to replace all of the XTL5000 and XTS5000 radios they have in service in their fire and police departments and not even bat an eye, right?
Also, I never mentioned anything about Alpharetta PD loving high speed chases and never going into Forsyth County during one of these chases. You are the one who mentioned that, but isn't this comparing apples to oranges on this topic? With Alpharetta PD being on the Fulton County Analog System they currently have to switch to a talk group on the Forsyth County System to let Forsyth County SO know they are in pursuit and headed that way, so until Fulton County migrates their existing 800 MHz System to P25 or the cities put in their own 700 MHz P25 System and have it linked to the Forsyth County System I don't see your point in using this as a comparison to the topic at hand. Either way, the officer has to switch to a talk group on a different system and the same applies to a Cobb County PD officer being in a pursuit going into the City of Atlanta. I know very few police officers and sheriff's deputies that are going to take a hand off the steering wheel to switch to a different talkgroup, yet alone try to switch to a different zone on a radio when driving 80+ mph and this applies to a Cobb County Police Officer in a pursuit going toward Atlanta or an Alpharetta Police officer headed to Forsyth County. They will do what is the safest and what they are trained to do and that is to tell dispatch to call the jurisdiction they are headed for by telephone and let them know what is coming. I will say that as more law enforcement agencies like the City of Atlanta and City of Marietta adopt "no chase policies" or at least more restrictive policies on pursuits the need for city law enforcement agencies to have "wide area coverage" throughout an entire county is reduced when it comes to this type of incident. The days of a City of Atlanta Police officer being involved in a vehicle pursuit all the way into Dallas (Paulding County), Georgia are almost gone and it's probably a good thing to reduce liability and not kill or injure innocent people. Besides, you mentioned mutual aid in your posted reply, so couldn't the 8TAC and other mutual aid channels be used in cases where one agency needs to talk to another. After all, isn't that what these are for? Would be a whole heck of a lot cheaper to put multiple mutual aid repeaters on towers throughout an area verses repeaters on a trunked radio system linked with microwave hops, right?
I understand and appreciate your points, but the bottom line is there is a lot of wasteful spending in government and the radio equipment and systems are just the tip of the iceberg. You mention "duplication of services" when it comes to two-way radio systems when you are talking about the cities in North Fulton County wanting to do their own system at the same time Fulton County finally decided to do their's (of course, this didn't happen until the cities in North Fulton had already went out on a limb and announced they wanted to do their own system), but what surprises me is you make no mention of the other three or four 800 MHz Trunked Radio Systems in operation in Fulton County that are funded by taxpayer dollars in some shape, form or fashion. Yes, I'm talking about the City of Atlanta's 800 MHz P25 System, the Atlanta Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) 800 MHz P25 System (probably one of the biggest waste in Homeland Security dollars we have seen in the Atlanta area), the MARTA 800 MHz P25 System and I think Georgia Tech or the State of Georgia may still have 800 MHz Systems on the air. Wow, can you imagine what type of radio system could be built if someone took all of the radio frequencies, antennas, microwave hops, and tower sites between all of these 800 MHz Systems, plus the existing Fulton County System and built out one system? Talking about eliminating the "duplications of services"! Man, I'd bet you could pool all of these resources together and have enough to add two or three tower sites to improve coverage if you could eliminate two or more users being on the same tower or those with tower sites within a mile of each other. Plus while we are on the topic of duplication of services, I haven't even mentioned the fact that the City of Union City has installed a UHF MotoTRBO System for their public safety operations because they didn't want to go to the multi-million dollar route to be on the Fulton County System, can you blame them? They realize they need coverage inside and slightly outside the jurisdictional boundary they serve, so was this a good move? You'd have to ask them that. Also, what about the City of Conyers having a separate 800 MHz System from Rockdale County, at least it was that way the last time I checked. So is it really me that is really drinking the "separatist Kool-Aid" or do you think it is multiple people in multiple places? Let's face it, as long as their are separate city and county governments they are going to think and operate differently and do what they feel is best for their particular jurisdiction to best serve the citizens and visitors to their area. Understand my point of view?
I've said enough on this topic.
Good day.