Is the County FD plan still to stay with conventional VHF? LACoFD's plan of taking over several LASD UHF, and their own VHF tacs, frequencies seems to be working out well.
What I've heard is that VCFD is required by Cal-Fire to maintain conventional analog VHF capability, and that the department can't justify the cost of operating a working analog system while paying subscription costs to operate on the trunked system. Spectrum availability is also not as good in Ventura County as the T-Band region ends around South Mountain.