Daviess County Fiscal Court along with county department leaders gathered Thursday to hear a presentation from Trott Communications, the company contracted to perform a county radio system needs assessment for $33,955. Trott gave County officials two replacement options ranging from $3.7 to $5.7 million.
Currently, Daviess County Sheriff’s Office, Daviess County Fire Department, Daviess County Emergency Management, the Daviess County Detention Center and County/City joint operations use the radio system. As determined by Trott consultants, these agencies would be better served if their radio systems were replaced with one of two primary options presented at Thursday’s meeting.
These departments currently use five separate VHF conventional radio systems, while the City of Owensboro utilizes a separate 800 MHz P25 trunked radio system for all City departments.
According to Trott, Daviess County is in need of new radio equipment in the near future.
“Analysis of the Daviess County public safety communications systems revealed that a majority of the infrastructure equipment is at end-of-life with limited manufacturer support available,” Trott’s analysis and recommendation report stated. “User radios and fire pagers are similarly at end-of-life and due for replacement in the near term. The City of Owensboro’s P25 trunked radio and dispatch console systems are current production and were recently upgraded to the latest hardware and software versions.”
County commissioners listened to the consultants alongside 911 Director Paul Nave, Daviess County Fire Department Chief Jeremy Smith, Sheriff Keith Cain, Chief Deputy Sheriff Major Barry Smith, EMA Director Andy Ball, Jailer Art Maglinger and AMR Ambulance Operations Manager Jamie Hardin, who will all be affected by the upcoming changes.
Two long-term options were presented to the officials — the County could replace their current systems with a redesigned county-wide VHF conventional solution or replace their systems with a countywide 700/800 MHz P25 trunking solution.
“A conventional, non-trunked solution will utilize similar technology as the current systems, but will deploy current generation equipment with long-term manufacturer support. The systems will be redesigned to address coverage and capacity issues to the extent feasible,” the report stated.
In order to adopt this redesigned conventional system, four VHF channels would be needed, as well as a campus for the jail. This system is expected to cost $3.7 million, including maintenance and upkeep.
However, Trott said that a county-wide P25 trunked radio system would provide the most feature-rich solution and would best address the overall needs and requirements of the system users. However, this system — if run independently — would come in at a total cost of $5.7 million, including maintenance and upkeep.
“Due to the efficiency of trunking, more users and operational groups can be supported with fewer radio channels,” the report stated. “The county-wide P25 trunked system can be executed as an expansion of the existing City of Owensboro system or as independent Daviess County deployment.”
If the City were to expand its services countywide for a shared Daviess County/City of Owensboro radio system, this approach could lead to “significant cost savings,” the report said.
As of now, Trott found that the County radio systems have only 67 percent outbound coverage, at best. The goal with these new systems is to get the County at 95 percent outbound coverage.
“The radios [currently used] are longer manufactured by vendors,” said Trott’s Tom Murphy. “The receivers are also obsolete.”
Murphy said that while Trott could not make any decisions for the County, they could supply them with the best knowledge possible in giving them the available options for upgrading and walking them through the process.
“This one of the biggest decisions I’ll have made in my almost nine years as Judge-Executive,” said Judge-Executive Al Mattingly. “We’re talking about an upgrade to our communications system, which cuts completely across the entire community. It really is a big decision that we have in front of us — one that involves so many taxpayer dollars, we hired a consultant to help us. I can assure you that any decision that might be made could go into next year, and we might not even make a decision by then.”
However, it was recommended that the detention center receive a temporary fix for their infrastructure problems, which were deemed more severe than the rest. Trott provided a budgetary estimate of $40,000 to redesign the jail’s system within the next six to 12 months.
