Schoharie County, NY: Costly Upgrades Needed For Emergency Communication System

[Mtnrider]

Costly Upgrades Needed For Schoharie County New York Emergency Communication System


SCHOHARIE COUNTY - Upgrading the emergency communication system in Schoharie County is a necessity and county leaders learned May 16 that ideal system upgrades could cost the rural county as much as $18 to $25 million, due to its rural layout and mountainous topography.


Costly Upgrades Needed For Schoharie County

 

[radiomanNJ1]

This article makes no sense. Is it the reporter or the consultant?

We explored VHF, UHF, 7/800 and they will not work?
But we can go to P25? Do they have a new band for P25?
Close to NYC? What does VHF public safety have to do with that?
NYC uses UHF and 7/8.

Smoke and mirrors. I am not saying they don't need new equipment but the report is not very clear.

 

[Mtnrider]

Its the one group going around all over this area selling/spewing garbage' to the leaders...Have to sell the biggest and bestest whether its needed or not ....microwave it......hook a computer to it to run it...and 'You need 800 mhz" yeah that works well in mountains..2500.00 dollar portables....unreal...Our county bought in to it.....cant wait to see how well it works

 

[jim202]

Sounds like you boys need to take to task the county fathers and make them say why they were sold on some BS presentation without asking anyone to verify the facts. Happens all the time to uneducated public safety board steerage.

Bad part of it is you tax payers let it happen. If you didn't speak up, shame on you also.

 

[Mtnrider]

I spoke my words to a few people......i got a "what do you know" Attitude i'll leave it at that....

 

[The_B_Chief]

Seems to be a trend.

Don't worry. Motorola will help you write a federal grant for the money to purchase the new system. That way they are guaranteed to get paid.

 

[MTS2000des]

at the figures quoted, a $25 million dollar system would cost every resident (based on the 2010 census figures) close to $762.

That is absurd.

But that is the Race to Waste for ya. Just raise taxes, cut services. Business as usual....

 

[12dbsinad]

What i'd like to know is what band the study showed would be the best for them. According to the article, nothing is.

Sounds like a race to waste folks... yet again.

 

[kb2hpw]

I find it fascinating that we can't get enough volunteers anymore for our more rural VFD's, but spending millions on a new radio system seems like a good idea. The economy in Upstate NY is very poor now, many of those more rural districts don't have the tax base anymore to finance such big capital projects. What is happening, is that people from downstate (NYC) are buying these properties for cheap, moving out to the "sticks", but suddenly realizing they are In The Sticks...meaning they don't have the services anymore that they got used to in the Big City. These transplants get on the Town Board, Gov't Office, School Board, etc and wrongly use Big City thinking for small town issues. They want to bring all the services they got used to in Urban areas, out to the Rural areas. And of course a big dollar developer comes along and speaks their language, enticing them to buy something very sophisticated (expensive). Whether it is correct or not is irrelevant. But they know better, of course.
Schoharie is not near New York City! It is a beautiful area full of rolling hills and farmland, about 40mi or so west of Albany, similar latitude. But it is within driving distance of NYC and many folks do venture out that way. Again, middle class economy is shrinking upstate, people die off, move away...land becomes very cheap in those towns.
Rensselaer County (where I live) ditched their VHF-Low system many years ago for an 800mhz trunked, is similar in topography to Schoharie Cnty. But Renss Cnty is nearby to the Capital District, uses sites in ALb county (which also has big hills/mountain, Helderbergs) to cover in-county comms. Schoharie is quite a bit more vast, I think it would require a larger amount of hilltop sites to cover well. Renss cnty is also part of "Capital District", has a bit more economic strength to warrant such an expense. Aside from a bunch of wealthy NYC transplants, the balance of the residents probably can't handle the increased tax hikes. The only real economy out that way is the Amsterdam or Schenectady areas, middle class people have to drive quite a bit to make decent wages.

 

[MTS2000des]

it's not just isolated to rural areas, the race to waste mentality is prevalent in big cities and suburban areas. Consider that in a metro area like Atlanta, we have NINETEEN disparate costly trunked radio systems, all are funded by county/city taxpayers.

These same counties and cities will FIND the money to fund the never ending forklift upgrade to public safety communications systems, all the while tabling well- you know- more pressing public safety priorities like manpower, training and keeping up with the ever sprawling nature of "white flight". I've always found it ironic how a 911 communications manager will go before a governing board (city council, county commission, etc) and pitch for some $10-30 million dollar radio system "upgrade", yet these are the same people who put off hiring additional dispatchers, call takers, or assisting other public safety administrators in pitching for more officers, more fire houses!

You know, the people who will be on the other ends of the radios and consoles they are "WASTING OUR COUNTY MONEY ON" to bank roll! So, while your upstate NY problems may seem to be coming from the big ballers in NYC, it's also the same people hard at work at wasting money in their own large metroplexes.

It's all a matter of priorities. Our government is broken, not just at the Federal level, but local as well. No big conspiracy, just follow the money.

Take the Money and Run - Steve Miller Band Live From Chicago - YouTube

 

[kc2kth]

kb2hpw made some excellent points there. I'm originally from Saratoga county in NY and feel the same - these areas have never had enough business to support the level of luxury services that I now find living an hour or so outside of NYC in NJ. When I return to Saratoga now I find cars parked on Broadway that we had barely heard of thirty years ago yet I can't figure out what these folks are doing for a living there.