MOULTRIE – The Colquitt County Commission has received a “hard number” on the cost of upgrading the county’s emergency services radio system.
The new system that has been proposed to the commission is the P25 digital radio system, which allows interoperable communications between law enforcement and emergency responders from various agencies in different counties.
At a previous meeting, Sheriff Rod Howell told the commissioners that he had met with Motorola and had been given an approximate cost of $4.5 million. At the most recent meeting, commissioners were handed a quote from Motorola to chew over that was in the amount of $4.4 million.
“We met with the vendor last week for a pretty extended amount of time and had other departments with us when we met. The Sheriff was there, 911, VFD, EMS. So, we want to give you an overview of the system, its capabilities and the costs. This is just kind of an informational update only. If we want to move forward with this, we still need to make a decision sometime before the middle of June. Because, at that point, prices increase for this particular system,” County Administrator Chas Cannon said.
Justin Cox, Colquitt County Emergency Management Agency director, spoke about the system’s capabilities and its benefits to the county.
“It brings us inline with every other department around us. The best that I can tell, this will eliminate our dead areas, this will eliminate traffic-walking. Deputies and dispatchers talking over each other, he said.
He said that when an individual keys up the mic to talk, another transmission cannot interrupt them, which was especially beneficial if they were calling for help or sending out important information.
“I want to reiterate, this is not fiber-optic based, so if somebody with a backhoe cuts a piece of fiber, this doesn’t affect us. This is microwaving back through different tower sites back to Albany through that core. I know this is a big number but this number is about double that if we do our own system and yearly maintenance cost could go to about three times that amount,” Cox also said.
He explained that the Motorola engineers had identified three towers in the county that would give the P25 radios maximum coverage across the county.
“We’re looking at a three-tower system to tie into Albany’s core. Albany’s core currently has a tower in Albany, Camilla and Coolidge that our system would also bounce-off of, if you want to call it that,” he said.
One tower is at the geographic center of the county, which, Cox said, was a tower next to the new public works building. Another tower, he said, which had been previously used by AT&T, was on the Ellenton-Norman Park Road and the third tower, which was being used by Southern Link, was in Berlin.
Cox went on to say that, if Colquitt County did its own standalone system instead of tying into the Albany P25 system, it would take five tower sites minimum and possibly six, which would include the three above.
“And that number goes up to between $8.5 and $10 million,” he added.
Cannon asked him if the grant would be applied to the total that they were looking at and Cox said that, right now, there would be between $1.1 and $1.2 million in grant money that could be applied.
Last month, the County Commission signed a letter of intent to receive grant funds from U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop’s office, which was filtered through the Southwest Georgia Regional Commission with the express purpose of helping the counties under its purview purchase the P25 radio system equipment.
“We’re pursuing several other options,” said Cox and went on to give a couple of examples including possibly some money from Hurricane Idalia assistance that might be available to use for communications.
“We’re pursuing every avenue we can on grants. We have a hard number now,” he said.
Cannon then asked E-911 Center Operations Department Head Theresa Warburg if she wanted to chime in on any concerns that she had with the current radio system.
She said, “I just know that, in these dead zones, whenever these officers need EMS out, they’re having to go back to their cars to call back and ask for information. If we try to do a radio check and make sure they’re okay, those are not going out. EMS, they have to switch over to County Fire [channel] in order to give us information or transfer information back and forth. It’s something that really needs to be done before somebody actually gets hurt.”
Dustin Hart, Emergency Management Agency Deputy Director and president of the Volunteer Firefighters Association, was also in attendance and he said, “Our handhelds, outside of city limits? We’re dead in the water with our radios. The only defense we have is if we took it off our hip and threw it at somebody. We sure ain’t calling for help on it. Anything would be a huge improvement for what we have on the EMS side of things. On the County Fire side of things, our system is so old now that we’re gonna have to look at avenues to go along with this. We have the best operating system, I think, right now, for an analog system, but it’s old and we’re starting to have some major issues.”
Sheriff Howell said, “What’s crazy is that when I came to y’all and we spent roughly $150,000 for what we thought was going to be a fix, it was to try to match what VFD has. I don’t understand how it still doesn’t get nearly the coverage that they get. I don’t know.”
He then reconfirmed with Cannon that $4.4 million was the total amount that it was going to cost to upgrade to the P25 digital radio system.
Cannon added, “There’s an operational cost, annually, for maintenance and that kind of thing.”
He said that $130,000 was the figure that they got but it could go up or down. He said he believed that the first year there would be no maintenance cost. It would kick-in on the second year of the contract.
Cannon also said that VFD could get on the system but the County would buy the radios or the VFD would buy them with money the County provides. The County would also provide the money for the maintenance cost for them.
Howell said, “What we also know already is that Moultrie Fire has found out what we’re doing. Moultrie PD has found out. And they’re wanting to get in now, too.”
He explained further that, if they get in, then they would hook-on to the County’s system because the system would have five channels.
“So we can let them in the room, then they help defray the cost for us on that side. On maintenance,” he said.
County Commission Chairman Denver Braswell asked Howell if there was a possibility that they could bring down the upfront cost, too, if they hooked into the proposed P25 system.
Howell replied that he assumed that if they were all to agree to do it right now, they could possibly split the upfront cost.
Cox said, “The cost to build the system to accommodate every public safety agency in the county is the same whether we do all of them or just one. The equipment cost is the same.”
He further said that, if they could figure out the per user cost of what it cost to get the system in place, then they could definitely work it out with the other agencies to cover a portion of it.
Cannon reiterated to the commissioners that they were looking at other options to off-set the cost of the P25 system.
He also said that June 19 was the cut-off date for the pricing that they were looking at. It would go up after that date.
Braswell said, “It could be a lot easier for us to swallow if we had county-wide participation.”
Cannon said that he would find-out what would happen if the other agencies in the County came on to the system. He said that he would find out if they had to do their own infrastructure or if they could come on to the County’s system.
“And, if they can … can we off-set some of this cost by charging them,” he added with Cox commenting that, right now, none of the other municipalities in the County were on the P25 system.