When one county explodes into four counties

[GlobalNorth]

If some Arizona legislators get their way, Maricopa County will be carved up into four counties: Hohokam, Maricopa, Mogollon, and O'odam.

While this may not sound like much to the casual scanner listener, it would mean that the existing Maricopa County SO, Constables, the Office of the Medical Examiner, and Courts would be subdivided into new Sheriff's Offices, new Constable precincts, several more OMEs, and new Courts. Other offices would follow such as Recorder, Assessor, Animal Control, Libraries, etc.

We might expect new frequencies to RWC and Topaz, new radio shops, new aviation units for each county [other than Maricopa], and other new resources.

I expect that this won't occur anytime soon, but stranger things have happed in AZ politics.

Bill that splits up Maricopa County into 4 smaller counties advances: here's what you should know about HR2787

Maricopa County would be split into four smaller pieces under legislation advanced Wednesday by Republicans in the Arizona House.

www.fox10phoenix.com

The actual bill: HB2787 - 552R - I Ver

 

[eg153wftx]

If some Arizona legislators get their way, Maricopa County will be carved up into four counties: Hohokam, Maricopa, Mogollon, and O'odam.

While this may not sound like much to the casual scanner listener, it would mean that the existing Maricopa County SO, Constables, the Office of the Medical Examiner, and Courts would be subdivided into new Sheriff's Offices, new Constable precincts, several more OMEs, and new Courts. Other offices would follow such as Recorder, Assessor, Animal Control, Libraries, etc.

We might expect new frequencies to RWC and Topaz, new radio shops, new aviation units for each county [other than Maricopa], and other new resources.

I expect that this won't occur anytime soon, but stranger things have happed in AZ politics.

Bill that splits up Maricopa County into 4 smaller counties advances: here's what you should know about HR2787

Maricopa County would be split into four smaller pieces under legislation advanced Wednesday by Republicans in the Arizona House.

www.fox10phoenix.com

The actual bill: HB2787 - 552R - I Ver

Just another form of " gerrymandering" will not happen in our lifetime. sounds good for certain political parties but the logistics and infrastructure needs would be way to costly to accomplish.

 

[GlobalNorth]

.. but the logistics and infrastructure needs would be way to[o] costly to accomplish.

Keep in mind that under Arizona Revised Statutes, Title 11, the County Sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer within the county and is supposed to support other agencies within the county. That said, why does the Maricopa County Sheriff have their own proprietary P-25 radio system that was built after the RWC and will not allow other agencies to regularly access it? Wickenburg's VHF radio has very little interoperability, but one critical incident on US 93 and their PD, MCSO, and DPS can't talk across the radio bands.

There is a longtime police academy at the base of South Mountain that has excess capacity and several reserve academies through the community college system, yet MCSO has to duplicate an entire academy complex and billed a significant portion of the project to AZPOST [all Arizona taxpayers]. The MCSO academy was originally open to only MCSO recruits, but the State stepped in and told them to accept any agency applicants or they would lose funding.

It would make fiscal sense to simply expand out RWC countywide for all local and county government operations and stop spending tax dollars on duplicate systems, but government is all about inefficiencies, fiefdom building, non-existent redundancies, and microcontrols of systems and programs.

I agree that it impractical, but why are NAU and UofA offering classes in a County where ASU has four major campuses, where ASU is the largest university in the State, and where every significant academic program offered by NAU and UofA is duplicated [except the UofA medical school]?

The more expensive and wasteful something is, the more attractive it is to the political class.

 

[KB7MIB]

As I understand it, the sheriffs office doesn't own the radio system. They are simply the largest user of the county's radio system. Every other county agency is on it as well.

MCSO has the RWC G/H/O decks in their radios, probably along with I deck, which is the 800 MHz conventional interoperability channels, and a couple of conventional 700 MHz channels.

V-AIRS (Wickenburg PD and Yavapai SO), U-AIRS (DPS) and 8-AIRS (MCSO, and DPS with AZWIN radios) should all be able to be linked together.

Oh, and MCSO deputies should also have access to V-AIRS given that they still have access to and regularly use Search 8 and 159.3900 for car-to-car comms. They were using VTAC-12 for that in district 3 at least until they were told to move off that channel.

John
Peoria

 

[GlobalNorth]

As I understand it, the sheriffs office doesn't own the radio system. They are simply the largest user of the county's radio system. Every other county agency is on it as well.

MCSO has the RWC G/H/O decks in their radios, probably along with I deck, which is the 800 MHz conventional interoperability channels, and a couple of conventional 700 MHz channels.

MCSO doesn't own the system, but they were the driving force behind spending a fortune to get their current system, under the guise of security.

Not all MCSO units have RWC access. I know Detention transport didn't, MCSO Court units did not, civil support did not, but supervisors and the brass who rarely did much field work did.

None the less, nitpicking details is effectively meaningless to the point that every major agency in Maricopa County having a sole and separate proprietary radio system is a waste of tax dollars. It does nothing to streamline the 'oft-claimed goal of interoperability', and do the people doing the work have the ability to communicate with their cohorts in other agencies - or do all or some of them have to tie up overworked and understaffed comm. specialists with telephone calls to other agencies to relay messages, requests, etc.

This is the same kind of thinking that led Joe Arpaio to promote himself to 5 stars on his uniform, because chiefs at Phoenix, Scottsdale, Goodyear, Mesa, et. al. wore four stars. Asininity at its best.

 

[es93546]

As a former resident of Arizona, with most of one side of the family that lives in Arizona I think this is a really bad idea. How would 4 counties address the regional metro area issues when divided up into small pieces? How would the area have a regional freeway system if 4 counties had to come to agreement? What would this do to a school system (K-12) that had so many problems a while back. Remember the federal courts nearly having to take over K-12 nearly statewide due to marginal amounts of money being spent due to the presence of older folks in certain areas of Arizona voting down school taxes.

At this rate southern California would be 18 counties, instead of 4, with LA county alone being big enough to be split into 8 given the same approximate 1.25 - 1.5 million residents per "county" as proposed by the legislature. No wonder I don't like living in big cities and visiting 1-3 times per year is enough.

I think there is more to this than what the legislature is presenting. This is just a way to do some gerrymandering without outright saying so. There is a lot more going on here than county sheriffs and radio systems.

 

[N9JIG]

While the likelihood of this coming to pass is slight at best, assuming it does my guess as to the scanner-related results would be fairly minimal, at least at first.

First off the current assets and liabilities would be proportioned between the resulting counties. These formulas would be applied to a vast majority of services and obligations of the county as it is and will become.

It is extremely likely that the existing radio system would remain pretty much as is and would remain to be used by the resultant counties. While the TGID's would of course be altered extensively the towers and freqs etc. would probably remain.

In the short term the new counties would likely share facilities until new ones can be built. It is also quite likely that the current MCSO would be continue to be used by all 4 counties, perhaps even semi-permanently. One county would be designated as the successor and be in overall charge of the Sheriff's office and the other three counties contract with the successor for patrol and jail services.

Each of the counties would have to elect a Sheriff who would oversee the operations of the SO within his county. After a new county is created a detail would be created within the existing SO for the new county. Officers would be assigned to patrol that new county under contract between the new county and the successor county. The sheriff for the new county would be in overall charge of the policy and procedures within his new county and the sheriff of the successor county would be in charge of the personnel and operations. Any conflicts between the two organizations would be worked out at the Administration level.

Eventually these may develop their own Sheriff's Departments and build a new agency, recruiting from the old SO.

The same protocols would likely apply to other types of services, including the county attorney's offices, highway departments, social services etc.

There are a million details that would need to be attended to and the whole process will take years to happen. If this passes I would also presume that each of the 3 new counties would be created one at a time, perhaps on a pre-planned schedule. They would likely go back and examine the last county creation (LaPaz in 1983) in Arizona and see what went right and what went wrong.

 

[KB7MIB]

Every so many years, some group starts talking about splitting off the East Valley into a new, Mesa-centric "Red Mountain" county. (I think that was the last name proposed). I don't recall who all was behind the idea, but obviously it never went anywhere.
I wonder if this quad-county idea has any of the same people involved in it?

John
Peoria

 

[Ravenfalls]

Good way to somewhat disband MCSO patrol division.

For the county islands within the new Maricopa County, that could he handled in one district or seperate back to east & west district's.

Main reason not to use RWC for MCSO patrol, simply doesn't provide the required coverage in remote areas for lakes division. MCSO has used the same wireless division who is the system owner. No reason to change that.

 

[Ravenfalls]

As far as Wickenburg goes, their best option would be to join AZ Wins. Doing so would mean they go encrypted. Provide them coverage into LA Paz & Maricopa County. Wins has expressed interest to take on local city & pd.

 

[scanbc780]

Wickenburg could go with AZWINS, but they already joined RWC almost a year ago and are sitting on the board, the tower just went up behind their new building. I haven’t seen licenses populate yet but they are expecting to cover the town with 1 100’ ground tower and expecting the surrounding area to be covered by Towers and White Tanks with a possibility of other towers if needed.

 

[n0doz]

I get what you're saying, but there are good reasons for a huge agency like MCSO to have their own system for educating officers. Same for Phoenix and Mesa. It's important for new officers to be trained in their own department procedures, accepted methods, and paperwork. Smaller departments can get away with using a regional academy, but then their recruits must still be trained by the dept in those things I mentioned above. No one wants a new recruit that isn't going to "fit in" knowledge-wise. And the public tends to hate this because they don't understand it: Department culture is important for new officers to learn as well.
Radio system: Why not? Sure, MCSO could fit another department or two on their system, but it's the Sheriff's prerogative to limit access. and so it is what it is. Not a good answer, but a political decision never is.
I wasn't aware that MCSO was "forced" to accept other department's recruits, thank you for that info. And they train them at a separate facility? HAH! That, Sir, is another one of those political decisions..... I imagine the Sheriff didn't want to "contaminate" his new people with exposure to officers from other places that might take a "softer" approach to the work. I worked for the largest department in CO for 35 years - that really is the type of thinking you see in big vs. small dept politics.
The only comment I can make about the university system is they are spread out to make higher ed more accessible. And don't forget, every college or university is known for its "specialty," too, such as medicine, engineering, social justice warrior (Evergreen State in Washington.... trust me, my youngest is an ESC grad.) Tuitions tend to be different, too. That's all I can say.
Good info, Global, thanks!

Keep in mind that under Arizona Revised Statutes, Title 11, the County Sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer within the county and is supposed to support other agencies within the county. That said, why does the Maricopa County Sheriff have their own proprietary P-25 radio system that was built after the RWC and will not allow other agencies to regularly access it? Wickenburg's VHF radio has very little interoperability, but one critical incident on US 93 and their PD, MCSO, and DPS can't talk across the radio bands.

There is a longtime police academy at the base of South Mountain that has excess capacity and several reserve academies through the community college system, yet MCSO has to duplicate an entire academy complex and billed a significant portion of the project to AZPOST [all Arizona taxpayers]. The MCSO academy was originally open to only MCSO recruits, but the State stepped in and told them to accept any agency applicants or they would lose funding.

It would make fiscal sense to simply expand out RWC countywide for all local and county government operations and stop spending tax dollars on duplicate systems, but government is all about inefficiencies, fiefdom building, non-existent redundancies, and microcontrols of systems and programs.

I agree that it impractical, but why are NAU and UofA offering classes in a County where ASU has four major campuses, where ASU is the largest university in the State, and where every significant academic program offered by NAU and UofA is duplicated [except the UofA medical school]?

The more expensive and wasteful something is, the more attractive it is to the political class.

 

[nd5y]

How would 4 counties address the regional metro area issues when divided up into small pieces?

It's not an issue in other metro areas that consist of multiple counties sometimes in multiple states.

 

[WPXS472]

I won't comment on the politics of this. I don't live there, and it is none of my business. My eldest son does live there. When he first moved there, I wanted to familiarize myself a little with the state. I was surprised to see that Arizona has only 16 counties. Our next door neighbor, Georgia, has 166 counties, and is nowhere near the size of Arizona. Arizona has about 7.65 million population, and Georgia has about 10.7 million. So the population density of Georgia's counties is much higher than Arizona's. I'll have to ask my son what he thinks about splitting up Maricopa county.

 

[es93546]

I won't comment on the politics of this. I don't live there, and it is none of my business. My eldest son does live there. When he first moved there, I wanted to familiarize myself a little with the state. I was surprised to see that Arizona has only 16 counties. Our next door neighbor, Georgia, has 166 counties, and is nowhere near the size of Arizona. Arizona has about 7.65 million population, and Georgia has about 10.7 million. So the population density of Georgia's counties is much higher than Arizona's. I'll have to ask my son what he thinks about splitting up Maricopa county.

Actually, Arizona has 15 counties. When I lived there 14 counties existed until La Paz was carved out of Mohave and Yuma Counties, this in the early 1980's. Counties in the western U.S. are much larger than the postage stamp counties of the Midwest and eastern portions of the country.

 

[Astrak]

When I worked for MCDOT we had access to G, L and O decks in our radios along with AIRS and the interop simplex frequencies.

 

[DanRollman]

Actually, Arizona has 15 counties.

And actually, Georgia has 159 counties. Not sure where the earlier poster got any of his numbers.

I grew up in Tucson, went to school at ASU, have lived in metro Atlanta for the last 20 years, and owned a mountain house in rural north Georgia.

As for the two states, I've seen it all. In Phoenix and Tucson, the entire metro area is in a single county (though I suppose Pinal County and the far SE valley would quibble with that). In Georgia, the Atlanta metro area is made up of 8 to 15 counties depending on how you measure it. I used to work in Fulton County and live in Gwinnett County. My commute was 20 minutes, and DeKalb County was in between! I'd be in 3 counties in a 20 minute drive on the interstate. Just about every one of these counties has their own P25 simulcast system (one shared system does cover several counties NW part of Atlanta). It works fine. It's pretty much how you'd want the simulcast cells arranged if they were all part of one system anyway.

 

[KB7MIB]

Well, Peoria extends up into Yavapai County.

And Apache Junction, Gold Canyon, and the San Tan Valley probably would quibble about it lol

John
Peoria

 

[hulka]

The police academy at the base of south mountain last I heard was taken over by Phoenix and from what I was told only trains Phoenix officers.

Why would detention officers working transport or primarily in the jails need access to RWC?

 

[hulka]

If you think about it, why do we have a school in almost every development? the list can go on.