County Plans $13 Million Emergency Radio Upgrade

The Morris County Board of Freeholders is planning a $13 million upgrade to its public safety radio communications system that is aimed at filling in the gaps in the radio coverage across the county.

The upgrade calls for the addition of three radio towers and software improvements that are expected to provide 95 percent reliability, which is the standard for a public safety grade system, said Raymond Hayling of the county’s Office of Emergency Management.

The current system is under capacity, Hayling said. It was originally designed for 750 users and now has 3,600 users, he said.

The freeholders introduced an ordinance Wednesday to appropriate the funds for the system upgrade. A public hearing on the ordinance will be held at a future meeting.

Freeholder Tom Mastrangelo, who cast the lone vote against the introduction of the ordinance, expressed concerns about the upgrade after researching systemic troubles in South Carolina and Pennsylvania, where similar radio systems built by Motorola Corp. have been installed.

In South Carolina, according to newspaper reports there, a $17.5 million statewide emergency system installed in 2007 has failed to work consistently, resulting in lost signals, garbled transmissions and the potential of emergency personnel being unable to summon help while in a dangerous  situation.

Mastrangelo said he was concerned that because Motorola has market dominance in the field, that Morris might be in the situation that county officials in South Carolina were, when Motorola proposed a multi-million fix to the broken system.

Mastrangelo did say that the reports he read from that state indicated that local officials might not have vetted the original application as closely as possible, and a newspaper report on the system indicated that Motorola told the South Carolina officials that to make the system work as intended they needed to built more towers, which apparently never happened.

“Motorola is in the marketing business,” he said. The concern is that the company will make the upgrades, but then repeatedly tell the county that more work needs to be done, costing taxpayers more money, he said.

Mastrangelo, who has a background in telecommunications and information technology, said the county should hire a consultant to review the current proposal before final approval. He asked if there was a way to get Motorola to sign a guarantee that the system would work as advertised.

Freeholder Deputy Director Douglas Cabana said the county has been rebuilding its radio communications system for several years and trusted the opinions of the staff who evaluated this proposed upgrade.

County Treasurer Glenn Roe said during negotiations for a contract, the county can place performance benchmarks that a contractor must meet before  being paid. That gives the county some protection against a contractor failing to meet the contract standards, he said.

Scott Di Geralomo, the county’s emergency management director, said the current system is a Motorola system, and the company has said that they will take all steps, at its own cost, to ensure the system meets the 95 percent reliability standard.

The upgrade, he said, should help extend the life of the system to 2030, which is the end of the reliable life of the radios and other equipment.

Di Geralomo said this upgrade pushes the Morris system far enough ahead that the next upgrade would only be software, and could cost an estimated $200,000.

The freeholders said that staff should reexamine the proposal before a final vote to ascertain if there were specific issues they needed clarify with Motorola, and that other issues could be address during the writing of the contract.

Hayling said the upgrade calls for three additional towers, one each in the northeastern section of the county, the southeastern edge, and the southwestern section.

The upgrade would provide better municipal coverage for portable radios, use the existing dispatching console system and most of the existing mobile and portable radios, Hayling said. About 400 radios countywide  would have to be replaced, he said.

The upgrade would also allow for radios to be reprogrammed over the air, he said. Currently to reprogram radios for software or frequency upgrades, they must  be transported to the county complex in Parsippany, reprogrammed by hand, and then delivered to the unit that uses them. It is costly and time-consuming, he said.

Improving the interoperability of the system will mean emergency communications improvements for all public safety units in all 39 Morris municipalities, and for the State Police barracks in Netcong, Picatinny Arsenal, Morristown Municipal Airport and all the county’s hospitals, Hayling said.