HomeMy WebLinkAbout2006-01-25 Transcription
January 25, 2006
Joint Communications Center Meeting
Page 1
January 25, 2006
Joint Communications Center Meeting
1:00 P.M.
COUNCIL:
Elliott, Wilburn, Vanderhoef, Correia, O'Donnell, Champion, Bailey
STAFF:
Atkins, Karr, Dilkes, Helling, Rocca, Hargadine, Niichel, J. Nasby
GUESTS:
GeoComm consulting team Paul Linnee, Mike Celeski; rep. of various
county jurisdictions
TAPES:
06-10 Sides 1 and 2; 06-14, Side 1
(problem with tape; does not start until I : 15)
Geo Comm:
Linnee/ .. . remember this is not only answering phone calls, but also talking on the two-
way radio to police, fire, and ambulance responders. So, looking at the radio
systems without looking at how and if they would work in a merged 9-1-1
dispatch center would not have made sense. So, as we did our analysis of the
Iowa City radio system, we also had to step back and say, 'Okay, what if there
was a merger between the City and the County for 9-1-1? Would what we're
thinking about or recommending for the City also work for that.' Next. Let's talk
about radio systems in general. Here's an excerpt from our report, which is
terribly important and I'm going to read it verbatim. The issues discussed in this
executive summary and the accompanying complete report represents important
elements in local government decision-making. Recent in-depth analysis of
problems and failures encountered in the response to major disasters, such as
September 11, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, have highlighted failures in
organization, technology, and management of the emergency communications
systems and processes. While there are some federal rules and/or resources that
come to play in these deficiencies, it has not been our experience, correction, it
has been our experience that well over 80% of these failings have been the result
of flawed decision making at the state, regional, county, or city levels. This study
that we're (can't understand) today enables Iowa City and Johnson County to take
pause and carefully consider these issues to make good choices. I think one of the
sad facts oflife here is, actually two sad facts oflife, radio system technology and
communication technology in general is a somewhat esoteric field. Certainly, in
the last three or four years all of us have had to become more attuned to this stuff,
make decisions about do we want dial up, do we want broadband, do we want
cable broadband, do we want DSL broadband; do we want a cell phone, do we
want a wired phone; if we get a cell phone, do we want a digital or an analog-
we've had to learn a lot more about this in the past few years than we had
previously. However, a lot of people in a lot of businesses, and government is
included in that heading, their eyes kind of glaze over and they say, 'Oh, don't
talk to me about this technical stuff. I can't figure this technical stuff out and you
tell me what I need.' And the party to whom that decision maker is often talking
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Iowa City City Council and Joint Communications Center meeting.
January 25,2006
Joint Connnunications Center Meeting
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with happens to be either a consultant, like me, or a sales person from one of the
major communications companies. And in either case, when you say that to a
person like me or if! was to put on a hat from one of the communications vendors
and you said it to me then, what you're telling me is, 'Hmm, I have the
opportunity to sell you either one relatively efficient system, and never sell
another one, or I have the opportunity to sell you one and you one and you one
and you one and you one and you one, and I can make a lot more money if I sell
five or six separate systems than if! sell one. So, often times the decision making
has not been in the best interest of the public and it's more often been in the best
interest of either the vendor community or in some cases, the consultant
community, because consultants do better if they have more customers rather than
less customers. So, move that along, Mike. Let's take a look now at the City's
800 mhz tmnked radio system. It operates at the 800 mhz spectrum, which is not
compatible with the County's 150 mhz radio system, or those of neighboring
jurisdictions or state or federal agencies. The state goverument, for example, has
nothing at 800 mhz and the federal goverument can have nothing at 800 mhz.
They're not allowed any stuff at the 800 mhz range. Now, to say that your 800
mhz system is not compatible with the County's 150 mhz system is no more
shocking than to say that this cell phone, which operates at 1.9 ghz, cannot talk to
a CD radio. CB radio operates at 27 mhz; the cell phone operates at 1.2 ghz? The
two cannot talk to each other. Now, are there things that can be done that can
make the two talk to each other? Not directly, no. We can set up a system
whereby with this cell phone, I can call a telephone number and that telephone
number is connected to a box, and that box is connected to a CB-base station, and
then when I talk in my telephone, my voice can come out that box, activate the
CB-base station, and my voice could come out on CB radio, but that is not a direct
interconnection, and it's a relatively cumbersome process. So, when I say they're
not compatible, that's what I mean. Take it away. The system here operates in
what's known as an analog mode. Digital is now the preferred mode. Now you
all are very familiar with digit, whether you know it or not. Every voicemail
message you leave, you're leaving it with a digital voice processing system.
Every voicemail message you retrieve, you are retrieving from a digital voice
processing system. Every CB you listen to, is all digital. Soon, and maybe some
of you already, are watching what's known as HDTV, high definition television.
Soon you'll be watching digital television and the audio will be digitized in that
process. Very simply put, digitization of audio has been around practically for a
couple of decades now and the process works quite simply, at least in concept.
The words that I'm speaking right now go into a digital processor. The digital
processor takes my words, analyzes them, the words and the sounds, analyzes
them and assigns a series of "I 's" and "D's" to every word that I speak or every
noise that I make, and those "I 's" and "D's" are then sent as packets, either down
a wire, ifit's a wired telephone system for example, or through the air ifit's a
two-way radio system, and the important thing is that the computer that's
processing my voice at this end and digitizing it has the same program code as the
computer at the other end in Chief Rocca's phone so it can take those "1 's" and
"D's" and unscramble them, using the same protocols that were used to scramble
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them, and so consequently, assuming enough of my "1 's" and "O's" make it from
my voice, my throat, through all of those processes I talked about, offthe
airwaves to Chief Rocca's cell phone, then the voice he hears coming out of the
loud speaker on his cell phone will be essentially a perfect reproduction of my
voice and there will be no static, there will be no background noise, unless there
was somebody in the background screaming or crying, but I mean no background
electronic noise, and the end product is about as clear of a reproduction of my
voice as can be imagined. Now, that's what the user likes about digital, that it's a
good sound quality at the other end. The FCC is madly in love with digital, and
the reason they're in love with digital is because it takes a lot less frequency
bandwidth to send digital stuff from point A to point B through the air then it does
to send analog stuff from point A to point B. So, if everybody were broadcasting
or operating on digital two-way radio systems in the U.S., then the FCC could
take the radio channels that they have assigned today and they could make them a
lot narrower, thereby freeing up a lot of radio spectrum for all ofthe other people
who want radio channels to do various things. Let's talk a little bit about the
width of radio channels for a moment. When you leave here today, go out in your
car, turn the car on - everybody's got an FM radio on the car - tune for example
to 91.1 on your FM dial. I don't know if there's a radio station there here or not,
but tune to it anyway. And then turn it up, one click to the right, and you'll see
that it doesn't, it goes from 91.1 to 91.3. It does not go to 91.2. If you went the
other way, it does not go to 91.0. It goes from 91.1 to 91.3 going right; 91.1 to
90.9 going left. So, what that tells us is that the radio channels on the FM dial are
200 whatevers apart ~ 91.1 to 91.3 is 200 whatevers. Well, the whatevers in
question here are megahertz. So, the reason they're 200 mhz apart is so that each
of those radio stations can have that much bandwidth in which to broadcast their
sound or music or outdoor or whatever they're broadcasting. If though, if there
were to be technology out there that would get the same audio quality in a channel
that was only 50 mhz wide instead of 200, then there could be many more FM
licenses issued in a given area, and many more opportunities for broadcasters to
be on the air. That's what we're talking about when we talk about channel width.
Go ahead, Mike. The major components of the Iowa City radio system are
obsolete. As I said, it was implemented in the early 1990's, click. It is
approaching 15 years old, which in high tech systems today is truly ancient, click.
How many of you out there are still using IBM PC XT's? That's what was the
fad in 1992. How many of you are using analog cell phones? Within a couple
years, it will not be permitted anymore. How many of you are using dot matrix
printers or cassette-tape answering machines? Not very many. I have a lady here
who not only has a PC XT, but she has a cassette-tape answering machine. Do
you also run a museum? (laughter) Okay. So the point is in technology, and this
is something that really fries people and I guess it fries us as consumers too,
doesn't it? Why do we have to keep buying this new stuff all the time? I have a
theory, which I've never been able to prove. I've been a music buff since I was
about 15 and when I was 15, the first record player I ever got was a 45 rpm, and it
was a little box that sat on top of the TV and plugged into the audio circuitry of
the television, and I used to buy these 45 extended records, big hole in the middle,
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Joint Communications Center Meeting
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two songs on each side, and I thought that was about the Cadillac, the best you
could ever get, because compared to 78 rpm, how could you beat it? Well, then a
couple years later they came out with 33 1/3 LP's, so I bought one ofthem. Then
they came out with reel-to-reel tape recorders and I bought one of them. Then
they came out with eight-tracks and I bought one of them. Then they came out
with cassettes, and I bought one of them. And now I'm up to CD's and I'm going
to get an MP-3 player in a few weeks. Now, I have a theory that somebody at
RCA or wherever really had invented the MP-3 player in 1955 (laughter), but they
would have gone broke if, I guess they did anyway, but they would have gone
broke if they couldn't have sold all of that intervening technology. While that
may be a humorous way to look at it, it's probably not accurate, but I know it's
kind of an irritant for people to have to buy this new stuff all of the time. You
know, City of Iowa City probably at some point in time in the past 20 or 30 years
had something on the order of an IBM system 360 computer, and then they went
out and bought an IBM AS400 computer probably, and they're probably going to
replace it, or have replaced it with some other kind of a new IBM computer.
That's life, folks, technology advances. And the current system is not compliant
with current and relevant open-architecture standards for interoperability and
competitive procurement. Let's talk about that a minute. This is a fascinating
discussion and I'll give you two names, which I think will bring it home for you.
Apple and Betamax. Back about 1982, the video cassette recorder, the player,
was introduced, and there were two competing technologies coming out of Japan.
One was made by a little company by the name of Sony and it was called beta,
and the other one was made by a little company by the name of Panasonic, and it
was called VHS, and they both chose to take dramatically different roots as they
went to market. Panasonic put up a sign on the building that said "anybody who
wants to use our technology to build and sell cassette recorders, come on it, write
us a check so you can license our technology and then go out and build to your
heart's content." And then Sony said, well wait a minute! Our technology is
better. Betamax is better than VHS. We're not going to license anybody on
Betamax. If you want Betamax, you've got to buy it from Sony. Well, we all
know how that one tumed out, didn't we? By 1980, 1990, pardon me, if you went
to the video rental store and said I'd like a copy of "A Few Good Men" in Beta,
ain't gonna happen! Because nobody was buying Betamax because it cost more
and because of that, nobody was making movies in Betamax, because everybody
had VHS, and so today, we stand here - which was the better technology?
Betamax. Which technology succeeded? VHS. Same way in computers. Apple
as you know has an operating system on their Macintosh computers, dramatically
different than and incompatible with the IBM, or the Microsoft Windows
operating system in what are known generically as PC's, although everybody
thinks of a desktop as a PC. Technically, a PC is a computer on which you're not
running the Apple Macintosh system, operating system, but bottom line, I've got
a son-in-law who's an artistic kind of a guy, he's got three Apple computers, he
swears by them, he thinks I'm about the most unworthy heathen in the world for
having three IBM-type PC's. He thinks I'm stupid, crazy, and I'm dealing with
bad technology. Of course, he doesn't work in the real world, and he doesn't
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realize that all my customers are dealing also with Microsoft operating systems,
and if I'm going to send files to my customers and I'm going to expect to be able
to use my customer's equipment when I go on site, I had better be operating in a
PC mode. So, the point here is that the VHS technology and the IBM or
Microsoft PC technology were open-architecture. Other people could build to
those models for compatibility. And as such, those are the two models that took
off and succeeded handsomely. And the current radio system that is in use in the
City today is not a party to that open-architecture. Back then in 1992, there was
no open-architecture model standard to which they could have built. Yours
happens to come from Motorola. They could not have built the open-architecture
at the time because one did not exist. One does exist now. If the radio system
does not provide good coverage, county wide, or adequate coverage inside
buildings in Iowa City. What I talk about here when I talk about coverage inside
buildings, I'm talking about police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and in the
case ofIowa City, all units of City government, Public Works, and everybody else
that are on the radio system. I'm talking about the ability mostly of walkie-
talkies, to be able to work when those individuals are inside of a building and
work means, A) hear something from the system; or B) be able to talk into the
system. Trunked radio systems are a definite handshake operation. The radio
needs to be in constant contact with the network to receive update signals all the
time, not just voice, but update command signals all the time, and because it is in
contact with the network and can be operated, that means also it can talk back into
the network and its voice or whatever you're sending, can go back in and be of
some value. And, the system in Iowa City does not provide good radio coverage
inside buildings. It does not have adequate channel capacity to support occasional
heavy user demands. We're going to talk about this in a minute in more detail,
but quite simply when you get a big football game Saturday going on here and lot
of people running around and the campus buses and a lot of police, University
police, City police, heavily involved in traffic direction and guard patrol, the radio
system can get busied out, which means that when you push the button to talk, the
radio will honk at you, saying 'I'm sorry, you're not important enough, you can't
talk.' Okay, this is something I'm going to try in one slide. I'm going to try and
explain trunked radio. And I think I can do it. Take it away, Mike. In a trunked
radio system, end radio users are actually little computer terminals with a
loudspeaker and a microphone in them. The main functionality... .anybody, any
of the police officers here got their walkie-talkie with them? You got one? There
we go, let me have that. The main functionality in this radio right here is a
computer. The minimal functionality is the fact that it's got a microphone, an
antennae, and a radio transmitter and receiver in it, but most of the expense and
guts in this radio are computing. So, next. When the user requests a channel
from the central radio system computer by pressing the "push to talk button" -
you know that button on the side of the microphone, or the side of the radio.
When they push that, they're sending in a signal that says 'I am radio 1,2,3,4, I
want to talk.' The central computer recognizes that radio user's LD. and the
central and the central computer dynamically assigns a frequency for that
communication, from the six frequencies, it is managing here in Iowa City. Now,
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you've got six radio frequencies involved in the system, but only five of them are
available for voice use. The sixth one is constantly tied up with sub-audible
control signaling that goes to and from the radios - that means that it can't be
used for voice. Then the radio system electronically reaches out to all of the other
radios in that user's group and electronically switches their radios over to that
frequency so they can hear that user talk. When that communication is
completed, the frequency that they were assigned for that communication goes
back on the shelf to be managed and dynamically assigned again by the central
computer the next time a user needs to talk. By the way, in our first
communication, that could have been a police officer talking to another police
officer. Now they're done, the frequency goes back on the shelf; the next
communication could be a Public Works' dump truck talking to a Water
Department pickup truck, and then that goes back on the shelf, and then the next
user could be a Campus bus talking to another Campus bus. That is the beauty of
trunked radio, is that it maximizes the utilization of a finite resource, i.e., radio
frequencies. Think of bank tellers and a line of waiting customers. In a trunked
radio system, all waiting customers cue up at one point, awaiting an available
teller, so the next customer in line always gets the next available teller, or in a
non-trunked radio system, like the one the County Sheriffs got for example,
waiting users line up in front of a teller, hoping that they picked the quickest teller
and the shortest line. It's kind oflike a grocery store. You have cash registers at
the grocery store and how many times have you picked the wrong line at the
grocery store? Go ahead, Mike. Trunking systems are far more efficient than
non-trunked systems. So, let's talk about coverage for the Iowa City radio
system. The current City system has two transmission tower sites, but only one of
them is in use at a time, while the other acts as the backup site. The current City
system was not engineered, and this is not being critical of the party who
engineered it. A lot of it had to do with the technology available at the time. It
was not engineered to provide good coverage outside the City limits. That was
logical. Why should the Iowa City taxpayers be forced to spend a bunch of
money to provide a good radio system, say for example, in North Liberty. That's
North Liberty's job, and the system was not engineered to provide good coverage
inside buildings, but that was the best available technology at that time. Here's
what the signal propagation for the current City radio system looks like. Now,
you're saying to yourself, 'What on earth is that?' Well, largely that's the outline
in blue, the outline ofIowa City, and right here is where the main tower site is
located, and where you have green area, you have a good radio-signal coverage,
portable, talk-in coverage. Where it's green you have good radio-signal talk-in,
and if you go down here, green is the very best; white is the very worst; and as we
go from right to left, it goes from green to yellow to red. So, as we look up here
where it's red, it's really bad. Where it's yellow, it's not so good. Where it's
dark green it's not quite as good as we'd like it to be. So, we see that ideally one
would like to have solid green throughout the City of Iowa City, and we clearly
do not have that with the current system operating off that one tower site. Now, if
we were to take this map and do a propagation using the other tower site, we'd
still only have one tower site. The (can't understand) would not be as good, in
This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription ofthe January 25, 2006,
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fact it wouldn't be as good as it is now because the other tower site is not as
effectively located as the main site, but it would not improve if we went to the
second site. Go ahead. Now, here's the coverage of the City's radio system
throughout the rest of the County. Remember, green over here is very good,
white over here is nonexistent, and here's the County boundary, the black line
right here. You can see that the Iowa City 800 mhz trunked radio system for
walkie-talkies and in my view, that is a standard to which all public safety radio
systems must be built. The Iowa City trunked radio system for walkie-talkies is
pretty much worthless in this area out here. A few... ..hills it might work okay,
and certainly up in the corner here, up in the corner here you might as well have a
brick in your hand. Okay. Next. In order to improve the signal coverage, if
we're talking about a City-alone radio system, a second active tower site would be
required. This second tower site would operate in a simulcast mode, thereby
insuring greater signal penetration and ability. Let's talk about that a minute. If
that's true, if simulcast would provide greater signal penetration into buildings,
and if it's true that there are two tower sites today in the City, why didn't they do
it this way back in 1992? Why didn't they put in simulcast? Here's where an
interesting marriage of technology's come in. Today simulcast radio systems
work extremely well. In 1992, they did not work well at all. The reason they
work extremely well today is because your tax dollars, and a decision by the
Clinton Administration in the White House in 1998, made the military's GPS
satellite system available to commercial use. And as such, the GPS satellite
signals, which at their very essence are nothing but excruciatingly accurate time
codes being transmitted from the satellite. Those satellite signals in their ultimate
accuracy is now available to be used, not only by GPS devices that people buy to
go hunting and fishing, but also to control the timing and sequencing of
transmissions on a simulcast radio system. GPS was not out there in 1992 and
availability to the highest quality signal was not available until 1998. That was a
decision the Clinton Administration made, to make GPS available publicly, rather
than scrambling it, so to speak, which is what had been done. So, now that we
have GPS, you can do good simulcast and get good quality. You couldn't do it in
92. Go ahead. It is rather a, an expensive simulcast controller would also have to
be put in, and none of the above, however, would address the other deficiencies of
obsolescence, analog, non-open architecture, and lack of inter-operability. But,
we could improve the coverage by just going simulcast, having two sites that are
simulcast controlled in the City. We could improve the coverage. Now, here's
how simulcast works. Click, here we have a piece ofland over which we want to
take a radio system and make it work. Click. And we're going to divide this
piece ofland into a bunch of quarter mile tiles. That's how, particularly with a
digital radio system, that's how you figure out how well a radio signal is working.
You go into each of these quarter mile tiles and we can ascertain whether or not
an adequate radio signal is being received. While we're not going to generate a
radio signal from our non-simulcast signal tower. We have now transmitted that
radio signal and it's gone out quite a ways in the County. Now, click, and you're
going to see the net effect. In that map, the gold stuff is good, meaning good, the
quarter mile out where the signal works. The green stuff is not good, and the
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reason the green stuff is not being hit is because the green stuff, essentially, is on
the other side of the hill. It's being blocked, and radio signals are line-site
straight. It's not like water, they don't flow down and go into valleys - they go
straight across. While with a single site trying to cover this terrain, it wouldn't
work very well. Next. Now we're going to add simulcast.
Karr/ Excuse me, could you put on your mike. I'm sorry.
Linnee/ Will I put on.. .oh, I dropped it?
Karr/ Yes, sir.
Linnee/ I'm sorry. Goodness sakes. Okay. Simulcast goes in where single-site cannot.
We've got the same land mass here. Go ahead. Got the same one tower. Now,
we're going to add another tower over here. Just a random spot. Now, both
towers are going to be transmitting the same signal simultaneously.
Simultaneously simulcast. Next. There, now one more time, and there we have
the same quarter mile grid pattern in all of the places where the signal was not
received previously, it has now been received, and remember, in a trunked radio
system, this is not just a question of this signal getting out to the radio, it's a
question of the radio signal getting back in, and they, there has to be two-way
communication. Go ahead. But, making a two-site simulcast system for the City
ofIowa City only may be in conflict with an eventual four-site Johnson County-
wide system, and here's why. If on Day I we knew that the requirement was to
provide good coverage county-wide, we would place four towers in places sought
out for the most efficient coverage on the entire county. Stands to reason. If our
objection is to cover the county, we're going to look at the land mass and the
terrain in the county, and we're going to put the towers in the four places that are
going to give us the best coverage county-wide. Quite likely, two of those four
sites would not naturally occur in Iowa City. (can't understand) defies logic. I
mean, Iowa City is maybe what, one-one hundredth of the land mass of the
County. Why would you put 50% of your tower resource in one-one hundredth of
the land mass? Carry on. However, if on Day 1, one was only trying to provide
good coverage inside the City, one would put the two towers in or near the City's
area, and not care about providing much coverage outside the County. Here's
what a four-site systems coverage plot would look like for the entire County.
Remember the one we saw earlier? This is one with four sites, and remember that
green is wonderful, anything that's green is pretty good, yellow marginal, red not
so good. We got a little weakness up here in the comer of the County, but the
rest.. . and a little bit down here in the valley, but with four sites, that's the level of
coverage you could get. Now, if you went with five sites, quite simply you would
take this one here, move it up here someplace, and then you would put a fifth one
down in this area down here. But, this four-site system in a digital system, this
four-site would probably be adequate. It needs a little bit more engineering to
lock that down, but probably would be adequate. Carryon. Now, this is mobile
coverage. Obviously the car's bolted, or the radio's bolted in cars and fire trucks,
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and buses are more efficient. They have more watts of power, better antennae,
what we call ground plane than walkie-talkies do, so on here even the weaknesses
tend to get filled in, so you'd have good mobile coverage in these areas, not so
good portable coverage. Go ahead. So, summary and the remaining radio issues.
The City system needs to have it's obsolescence fixed by replacing the computer
controller that is no longer going to be supported by Motorola, number one.
Number two, the City needs to fix their capacity shortage by adding a seventh
radio channel. They're already licensed on this seventh radio channel, but they
don't have the equipment. Third, are the projected costs for those two steps right
there is a relatively modest $125,000. Next. We suggest or recommend that the
City should fix its coverage by going to a two-site simulcast system. That,
however, brings the project cost up to $1,050,000 because to go to a two-site
simulcast system, you need to put in an actual second site, not just the trimmed
down one that's there for backup today, but an actual replica ofthe first site, and
you have to put in a simulcast controller. And, you have to link the two sites
together. So, that goes into $1, 050,000. Now, with those two steps, you're still
proprietary. Meaning, you can't buy radios from anybody else, and nobody else
can come in and sell you radios, with closed architecture, you're still analog, and
you still lack interoperability and you still have poor coverage out in the County.
But, you spent $1,050,000 to solve the coverage problem in the City and the
channel capacity problem. And then there's the question of the County's radio
system. Talk about Johnson County radio. The.. .it's an old style conventional
VHF 150 mhz, and the key point here: systems. It's not a system. It's a bunch of
different radio channels, each of which is a discrete separate radio channel, and
another very important thing: it is, and I don't mean this as a pejorative sense, it
is not a smart radio system. It is... the City's radio system is, has intelligence in
that the radio's are communicating with the head end all the time, and the head
end is communicating with the radios. So, there's a data pathway between the
two. The County's radio system is dumb. All it does is listen to voice and talk in
voice, and listen to voice and talk in voice. I could go out this afternoon, ifI was
so inclined, and I could go on eBay and I could buy for probably not more than
$25 a Motorola HTlOO walkie-talkie and I could program it, let's say both Mike
and I buy them and we put four channels in each ofthem, and let's say we're
really not very nice people. We could go sit in front of the Sheriffs office for the
entire afternoon and render all Johnson County communications to be null and
void. Just sit there and babble. Just sit there and key up the mike and make a few
noises. Whatever we wanted to do, we could knock the Sheriff offthe air by
playing with these radios this afternoon. That's because the system does not,
what's the word I want to use? There's no handshake arrangement. There's no,
remember we were talking about the City system? Where the radio sends in an
J.D., the J.D. is accepted, and the system allows the radio to go ahead? That sort
of thing does not happen in conventional VHF radio system, so as a result of that
there's a bunch of radios out there that talk on the various radio systems that the
Sherifftalks on, and the Sheriffs Department doesn't know how many ofthem
there are. It's not their fault. That's the technology. IfI'm in the Podunk fire
department and some resident leaves me a $5,000 bequest and I'm the fire chief, I
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want to go out and buy walkie-talkies for the wives and kids of all my firemen, I
can do that, and I don't have to tell the Sheriff, and I don't have to ask the Sheriff,
because his system doesn't know and doesn't have to give my radios permission
to talk. So, the Sheriff does not have a trunked radio system, but by the way,
that's not unusual. The vast majority of sheriffs in the State ofIowa, and
certainly in the rest of the U.S.A., do not have tmnked radio systems. The
Johnson County radio system is operating on what are called the wide-band
channels. Remember, I talked about 91.1 to 91.3? Well, in the case of the 150
mhz two-way radio channels for public safety, the FCC has issued an order that
by 2013, they must now be operating under narrow-band radio channels. Period.
That's what I said right there. Much of the base radio equipment, therefore, in the
Sheriffs Department and many of the field radios in use in the County will have
to be replaced because.. .as a result of this FCC mandate. Sheriffs Department
does have good interoperability with some of the neighbors, although not with
Cedar Rapids because they're on a trunked system just like Iowa City, on an 800
system I should say. Nor do they have, well they have good interoperability with
the planned, but not yet funded, State ofIowa 700 and 800 mhz tmnked radio
systems. The County's radio system does not have good in-building coverage in
many areas, just like the City's. It is an analog system and as such has security
issues, meaning that anybody with about $40 can buy a relatively low-end scanner
and listen to everything that is said on the Sheriff s radio channels, both police,
fire, and ambulance. Okay, let's talk about coordinating radio operatives. We've
identified that the City's got their set of problems, the County's got their set of
problems. Should they work together in upgrading or resolving these problems?
The common approach in counties in the U.S. who are trying to improve all
governmental coordination and operation in disasters and day-to-day, is to move
to an all-agency. What I mean by that, and this is a fairly common I think mistake
that people are making, all-agency means more than public safety. It means
public works, it means public transit, and how many of you have seen what I
consider to be the most eerie picture that came out of Hurricane Katrina in New
Orleans? The picture from a helicopter of four acres of school busses. Sit and
parked, because nobody could tell them where to go. Most units of government
would not even think about putting school busses on our trunked radio system?
That's nuts! Most school busses now have radios, but most of them are not on the
general government tmnked radio system in the area, and they should be. As
should the public transit busses. As should public works, because when you give
the big one, sure, you're not going to get a hurricane like Katrina, but you could
easily have a big tornado or any number of other things happen here. When you
get the big one, you're going to need busses and front endloaders, as much if not
more than, you're going to need police cars and fire trucks. This does not require,
by the way, this putting in an all-agency shared trunked radio system, does not
require merging 9-1-1 dispatch centers, but it does facilitate it. Let me give you
an example. Up in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, back in 1995, they
started a process for implementing a metro-wide regional 800 mhz trunked radio
system. It was going to be designed to serve the nine county Minneapolis-St. Paul
metropolitan area and at its outset, it was described as a radio system that would
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have everything with a tax-exempt plate would be on it, and now this radio
system is, has been implemented, in five of the nine counties. It is being
implemented in two more this summer, and the eighth county is about two years
down the road. The population on this system now is close to 20,000 radios, and
it is serving all state government, meaning the DOT and Highway Patrol and stuff
like that. It's serving all EMS. It's serving all government in the City of
Minneapolis - police, fire, public works. It's serving all government in Hennepin
County government, a county of a million people. It's serving all public safety in
the rest of Hennepin County, and it serves the transit system's 1,400 busses. It
serves a light-rail system. On and on and on, and the system by the way is now
being built out to serve the rest of the state. Now, to this point right here, the day
they started talking about that system there were 26 9-1-1 dispatch centers in the
Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. Today, there are 22. A year from now,
there will be seven less because one of the counties, Dakota County, a county of
340,000 people, is moving onto the trunked radio system and they're using that
opportunity to merge seven municipal dispatch centers and the county into one
county-wide communication center, serving a county that's projected to grow to
750,000 people within the next 20 years. So, again, it doesn't require that you
merge, but it does facilitate it. The same logic, by the way, of sharing resources is
applying to states. This is happening in Minnesota, it happened already in South
Dakota, believe it or not. South Dakota, which had been at least 100 years behind
the rest of the country, is now at least a decade ahead of everybody else. It's been
done in Michigan, it's being done in Illinois, it's being done in Ohio, Indiana,
Colorado, and others too numerous to mention. And Iowa is actively working
towards a system. I've been in contact with people at the Iowa Department of
Transportation who are involved in radio stuff, and the Iowa Department of
Public Safety, who are involved in radio stuff, and they are covetously eyeing a
system not unlike the one that's in place, or being built, up in Minnesota right
now, and it is fairly common desire around the country to get there. Go ahead.
Such a system that would be put in Iowa would be what is called a P25 Standards
Compliant. Remember earlier I talked about open architecture? Well, the name
of the standard that defines open architecture in two-way radio is P25, which
stands for Project 25, and the system that they would put in Iowa would almost
certainly operate at both 700 and 800 mhz. Local units of government in Iowa
could plug their system into a state-wide system if one was built, or if a local
system preceded the state-wide system. Logically the state-wide system would be
built on using elements of the local system. So there would probably be some
monetary situation. For example, I'll give you a perfect example. Our company
is managing the implementation of one of these systems right now up in
Woodbury County and Sioux City, and when and if the State ofIowa builds their
system and the State ofIowa looks at what are they going to do about covering
northwestern Iowa, they're going to come knocking on the door of Woodbury
County and they're going to say, 'Can we use this, this, this, and this, and if so,
how much would you charge us,' and the amount of money that Woodbury
County would charge the State would be less than what the State would have to
pay to put in their own stuff, replicating the functionality that Woodbury County
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would already have. Logically, the same would apply up in Cedar Rapids, the
same could apply here, same will apply - we're doing the same thing, by the way,
over in Pottawattamie County in Council Bluffs. Carryon, oh, wait. These
concepts, when applied to Johnson County, would argue in favor ofthe County
spending no money to migrate to narrow-band on their current VHF system, but
rather to migrate over to a new City 800 mhz trunked radio system that would be
built to be county-wide. Now, let's talk about a new county-wide 800 mhz digital
trunked radio system. We would think that it should be built with four sites and
they should be simulcast from day one. Should be built to P25 Standards
Compliance and open architecture, ensuring competitive procurement of user
radios. Now this is critical. Recently, for the past - I've been fighting this battle
for ten years - for the past ten years, Motorola, which is the 800 pound gorilla in
the two-way radio world, and the 150 pound gorilla, their biggest competitor, a
company that used to be known as GE and then became Ericcson and then
became Maycom, they've been duking it out for at least a decade on this topic, of
P25. Well, within the past two months, Motorola, or correction - Maycom-
introduced P25 Compliance Subscriber radios. So, if you have a Motorola
trunked radio system that is P25, you can buy radios from either Motorola or
Maycom, or E. F. Johnson or California.. . Kenwood. Today. You can build the
system with maximum interoperability in mind. Today, for example, in the Iowa
City 800 mhz radio system, they don't have any ofthe nationally designated
interoperability radio chaunels in those radios. They should, and if you build a
new system you should have all of them and more, and you should have network
and connectivity with neighbors, as well. You should build the system to have ten
channels from day one. That would handle at least 1,200 user radios. That would
be for the City and the County. You should build the system asa digital system
from day one. It will need to be digital. This is an important caveat here. Now, a
building digital with strictly 800 mhz system is not a requirement of the FCC.
There are analog 800 systems, as Iowa City has today. However, if you chose to
use any of the 700 mhz frequencies that almost certainly be a part ofthe State's
system, in 700 mhz with a couple of exceptions for some low power coordination
channels, everything's going to have to be digital. And it's going to have to be
P25 digital, according to the FCC rules. So, the grand total cost for all of this
above, county-wide system, including a 1,015 new user radios, which by the way
is the count we get when we count up all the radios that would have to be
provided to City users, campus users, and county users today. 1,015. This system
will cost $6,917,000. That sounds like a whole lot of money, but it is...I'll give
you a couple of examples that maybe put it in context. Both Mike and I have
been working with a county in Nebraska, Washington County, Nebraska, which is
(can't understand) Omaha. It's a county of 35,000, north of. ..well, it's right north
of Omaha, but it's separated from Omaha proper by about 20 miles offarmland.
This county's only got close to what? 30,000 people in it, and they're putting in a
digital, five channel, digital trunked radio system. They have three sites, and it
cost them about $4,200,000 and they're connecting it to an already existing
controller, being run by the City of Omaha. Carryon. Okay. So, this system of
$6.9 million costs $2.5 million more than building such a system for the City
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only, with two sites, but the City system would be digital and P25. But, despite
the fact that it's $2.5 million more, that's what we recommend, and that's a
relatively minimal expense for adding to the City's system a capability that would
serve all of Johnson County for all communications for all governmental agencies
for at least the next couple of decades. Give you an example. A client I'm
dealing with down in Illinois, St. Clair County, Illinois. It's a county of about I
think it's 531 square miles, which is somewhat bigger than Johnson County, and
it's right on the Mississippi River so there's a lot of bluffs and all that stuff, so
their county is going to require ten sites to have the kind of coverage that they
need and since the system was designed in 19 or 2003, we started out with a five-
channel system and now as users have been coming on the system, it's now
grown to an eight-channel system and every time we add a channel, it costs about
$250,000. That's $25,000 each times ten tower sites. So, if you had a four-
channel, correction, a four-site system in Johnson County, today built to handle
ten channels and serve say 1,200 users, as the county grows and you need to add
users, every time you add another 200 users approximately, you need to put on
another channel, it becomes relatives inexpensive in the scheme of things to do
that. Okay. We believe that the cost for such a system should be shared between
the City and the County, as well as control of the system. So it would no longer
be the Iowa City trunked radio system. It would be whatever name you want to
come up with that describes joint ownership and joint control of the system. Now
we're going to talk a little bit about interoperability. I've spent a lot oftime
mentioning interoperability today, I want to flush that out slightly. Go ahead.
This is a very long thing and I don't think we're going to...it doesn't quite fit on
the screen it's so long. I think I can read it anyway. Why is interoperability so
important? One could rightfully ask why it's so important to have the Iowa City
and/or other local government agency radios be able to talk on and through the
radio system's infrastructure of such far-flung places as Illinois, Minnesota, and
other distant, and some not so distant, places in Iowa, and vice versa. While
recent and unfortunate history has provided a salient answer to that question.
Specifically, the response to Hurricane Katrina in the greater New Orleans and
Mississippi gulf coast areas showed how it can be that police cars and portable
radio equipped officers and fire trucks with portable radio equipped firefighters
and ambulances with portable radio equipped paramedics from far distance, by
several thousand miles, by far. . . from far distance agencies, may be needed to
assist with a response to and management of a major disaster. I saw film of
officers of the Oregon Game and Wildlife Commission with their boat patrolling
the streets of New Orleans, looking for bodies, and if they're doing that and they
can't coordinate with the individuals from the New York Wildlife and Game
Commission who are doing it six blocks over and so they're repatrolling the same
block over and over again, that's a bad deal. So, it could be natural, such as
Katrina, or terrorists (TAPE ENDS) that could affect a major college town such as
Iowa City that has scheduled massive gatherings. And those radios coming from
far, from afar, need to be able to do more than talk a few blocks between
themselves. They need to be able to be a part of a command and control network
that is so necessary for effective resource deployment and information exchange
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to support correct decision making. We've all seen all of the bad decisions that
were made in New Orleans. A lot of those were because nobody could talk to
anybody else. The people at the top of the food chain had no idea what was
happening at the Superdome and elsewhere, because their radio systems were not
compatible, or were not working. Further more, most of to day's public safety in
general government radios will not even be able to talk to radios from their own
home agencies, once they leave their hometown. Chief, how many officers in the
Iowa City P.D.? 71...we're going to take all 71 of those cops, put them out front,
put a walkie-talkie on their belt and we're going to send them up to Des Moines to
help with the big one, except they won't be able to talk to anybody. They won't
be able to talk to themselves, won't be able to talk to Iowa, or Des Moines; won't
be able to talk to the State; won't be able to talk back here. That's the problem.
Furthermore.. .oh I read that furthermore. ..okay. This is why a community needs
an interoperable radio system that will permit emergency services visitors to talk
into and through their local system, as well as be made up of local radios that
have a decent chance of being able to talk if they need to be taken elsewhere.
That's why interoperability is important, in my view. No opinions in the news,
but that's an opinion. Okay. I'm going to pause a minute, and we're done with
radio. Now we're going to move into the 9-1-1 dispatch. Are there questions,
comments, or anything that anyone wants to bring up as it relates to this?
Anything not clear? I guess I'm just....
(person from audience)/ Does that amount of money also include the building, where
things would be centralized and all of the equipment in that centralized building?
Linnee/ Ifby building if you mean what we refer to in the business as a radio shack, i.e.,
the structure in which the radio equipment is installed - yes. Ifby building you
mean the place where the dispatchers sit and answer the 'phone and talk on the
radio, no. (can't hear) All right, does that answer your question? Okay. There
was a question in the back. If you want to say it I can repeat it for the mike.
(person from audience)/ The question I had was it seemed like the 700 mhz (can't hear)
just 800, it seems like something's missing. What do you recommend (can't
hear)?
Linnee/ Well, the 700 mhz is, it's a whole bunch of radio spectrum that has been
designated by the FCC. Where did the FCC, I mean, they can't manufacture radio
spectrum, well, the FCC is getting the 700 mhz radio spectrum by ordering UHF
TV broadcasters to vacate television channels 69 through 83, and gee, isn't it
ironic that at this time oflobbying reform and lobbying discussion this was
supposed to have happened a few years ago, that the broadcasters were to have
vacated this spectrum. Guess what? No vacating yet. Guess who spends more
money on lobbying than anybody else? The National Association of
Broadcasters. So, in parts of the U.S., 700 mhz is not yet available. In most of
Iowa, it is available. And can be licensed once the State, and I don't mean the
State government. I've got to make sure this is perfectly clear. Once a state
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committee completes a plan for how the 700 mhz frequencies will be used in the
state, but the state committee is not a state government committee. It's a
committee of public safety radio users in the state, and they get together and they
do a plan, and they send it to the FCC and the FCC blesses that plan. Only two of
these plans have been adopted thus far in the U.S. The only one that's practical is
the State of Missouri, and that would be a perfect one to copy. Southern
California did it but as ajoke because all the UHF TV stations are still on the air
in southern California, so they got their plan approved, but there are no radio
frequencies to use. So, in Iowa the radio frequencies are available. This
committee has to get together and do their thing, and that's about a year long
process, and they get it passed offby the FCC. At that point in time, they can be
licensed and used, and 700 mhz radio frequencies are usable in 800 mhz radios,
provided you ordered the 800 mhz radios to be able to deal with 700 mhz
frequencies. The existing radios in Iowa City today cannot talk on 700 mhz
frequencies, but any new radios you would buy for an 800 mhz Johnson County
system would be able to talk on 700 mhz frequencies. So, assuming the State
does go to a 700/800, that implies that they would use frequencies from both
bands, mixed and matched. Assuming the State does that, assuming it's P25,
assuming Johnson County and Iowa City did that, there would be full
interoperability between all state entities and everyone here. Does that answer the
question? (person speaking in audience) Nothing, nothing. No, if you buy new
800 mhz trunked radio system today, be definition, the radios you buy are also
700 mhz compatible. Sir, you had a question? (person speaking in audience)
Excellent question. What happens to the existing 150 mhz frequencies? The FCC
is not, what's the word I want to use? They are not the Godfather. They do not
give you everything. What they give you, they take away with the other hand.
So, if you go and apply for x number of radio frequencies to put in a lO-channel
800 mhz system in the County, the FCC is going to expect that the County is
going to give back some of their VHF radio frequencies. Now, the reality is that
there is not now nor likely will there ever be an effective 800 mhz trunked fire
paging system. Consequently, fire paging continues to be done on VHF, and so
the County would be able to maintain at least one VHF radio channel for fire
paging systems. I'll give you a perfect example. The county I'm working with
down in Illinois, where we just put in this big 10-site, now 8-channel trunked
system, we also upgraded their fireNHF radio system and put in a 3-site VHF
simulcast system for better pager activation. So, some of the VHF channels will
stay, but to the extent that the County's got about, what is it - about eight or nine.
You're going to have to give up some of them. I will say this, the FCC in typical
federal bureaucracy is not real good about ever getting around to coming to
people and saying, 'Please give me those channels now.' They say it in all of the
rules, but the clients I'm dealing with have not received the big letter yet. The big
"give me back." I think when it happens is when the client goes to renew their
license. Like for example in St. Clair County, Illinois, most of their licenses
expire in 2014. So when they go to renew the VHF licenses in 2014, I think the
FCC's going to say, 'Oh, wait a minute! Didn't we give you 16800 mhz
channels in 20057' At which point in time, the FCC will say, 'Well, you're going
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to have to justify it to us why you get to keep these VHF radio channels.' And
clearly, we could not justify keeping all of them. Ma'am? (person speaking in
audience) Yes, Sth grade language. Megahertz. I'm going to begin here. There
was a guy, a German scientist, whose name was Hertz, and he is the one who
discovered the properties of the electromagnetic spectrum. And so, in honor of
him, just like the guy who discovered degrees of temperature was Fahreuheit?
That's why we have degrees Fahreuheit. Well, we have Hertz, and here's the way
I like to explain it. The spectrum of electromagnetic radiation goes from zero
hertz, way over there, to lots of hertz, way over there. Over there is x-rays. They
kill you. Over here, my shoes. They don't emit any radiation. Somewhere
between my shoes and x-rays, is what we call the usable magnetic spectrum, and
for purposes of general stuff, it begins at about SOO kilohertz. That's the low end
of your AM radio dial. A kilohertz is a thousand hertz. A hertz is a cycle per
second. So, SOO,OOO cycles per second is the low end of the AM radio dial. 1,600
kilohertz, or 1,600,000 hertz, is the high end ofthe AM radio dial. Then you
move up to the FM radio dial. It starts at 88.7 megahertz, million hertz. It goes
up to 107.9 megahertz, or million hertz. The cell phone is at 1.9 or 1.2 gigahertz,
billion hertz. And now you get beyond this and you're up to 4.9 gigahertz, it's
another area that you can use, and then beyond that you're pretty much into the
microwave and stuff like that, that isn't very good for two-way radio. Does that
make sense? Help at all? Okay. Sth grade or was I still at 8th? Okay, well my
wife accuses me of being a perpetual 8th grader so.. .sir? (person speaking in
audience) Excellent question. Does the amount of power used in the various
hertz vary? Well, yes it does, but not by any requirement. Let me give you an
example. CB radio - we all know CB radio. Operates at 27 mhz. Every CB
radio in the world, except those operated by all the truckers that are cheating,
every CB radio in the world is 4 watts of power, because the FCC said you can't
be more than 4 watts of power. Course what the cheaters do is they buy a thing
called a linear amplifier and try to get it up to about 400 watts of power. But,
technically, they're supposed to be 4 watts. Now, did the FCC say 4 watts
because it needs 4 watts to work? Not at all. The FCC said 4 watts because
somebody stroked their chin and said, 'Gee, how far do we want one CB radio to
be able to talk to another one? Ehhh, a couple of miles.' Okay. How many watts
is it going to take for them to be able to talk a couple miles? 4, so that's how that
. was arrived at. If the FCC would have said 20 watts, then CB radios could talk
ten miles apart. But, if two CB radios are talking ten miles apart on channel 19,
nobody else within those ten miles can be using channel 19. So, in order to
maximize the availability, they limited the power, which also limited the
performance. In the case of, for example, back in the SO's, the popular radio
frequency band in pubic safety was what was known as low band, 39 to S4 mhz.
At low band you tended to operate pretty big power, SOO watt base stations, 110
watt mobile radios, but you only had one site and you were trying to get that radio
signal as far as you could get, and when I grew up as a dispatcher back in the
early 1970's, I can remember sitting in the dispatch center in the city of Richfield,
Minnesota, suburban Minneapolis, listening to the Louisiana State Police out of
Baton Rouge. Their radio signal came right up the Mississippi River. Nowadays,
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the big question is not how, how much far do you want. It's how little power do
the Feds want to give you, because by reducing your power, they maximize the
opportunity to reuse radio frequencies again and again and again and again. So,
when we put out repeaters on an 800 mhz tmnked radio system. It's like a 35
watt repeater. Ifwe put out walkie-talkies, it's like a 5-watt walkie-talkie. It
would be nice if we could have a lO-watt walkie-talkie and a 100-watt mobile
radio, but the Feds won't let you. Other questions? Sir? (person speaking in
audience) Yes. What does that mean? Oh. That was just a courtesy? Time
signal or something? Okay. (laughter) Question was having to do with a failure,
Katrina was the single point of transmission between elements of the radio
system. Typically, obviously in a simulcast tmnked system, there needs to be
connectivity between the sites and the controller, and the practical way to do it,
the common way to do it, is with a microwave system that has redundant backup
in it, and also can back, go back the other way ifit gets ajam or an outage. That's
certainly what we would recommend. That could also be backed up, depending
upon local telephone company transport costs, it could be backed up by leased Tl
circuits, but the problem with leased Tl - Tl is a telephone company term for the
fatness of a, well not the fatness, the data carrying capacity of a leased phone line.
The problem with using telephone circuits for a simulcast trunked system is
timing is so critically important in a simulcast trunked system and if you're going
through the telephone company, there could be signal delay and you could have
timing problems. So, typically a, what is usually called, I think, it's called a star-
point microwave is the best way to go. As it relates, now back on Katrina though,
here's a fascinating thing that a lot of people don't know. Now they knew that
New Orleans was obviously in the hurricane zone. They knew that they were
going to have big trouble with their radio system if they ever had the big one. But
here's what they didn't know. What most people don't know is that on the
morning after Katrina came through, the New Orleans Police Department radio
system worked just fine. No problems. By the afternoon it died, but there was no
wind. Why did it die by the afternoon? Nobody could figure that out. Here's
why. They were real smart, the guy who designed the system is an engineer by
the name of Dominick Tusa and I know him fairly well and he's a smart, smart
guy. They were so smart that the put the generator, the backup generator for
powering the system, on the roof of the Police Department building, never going
to flood out. Very smart. Here's what happened. During the wind, a piece of
sheet metal was blown against the front end of the generator. Thereby blocking
air intake to the radiator. After the generator came on, it was powering the system
quite nicely, until the generator engine fried because it overheated because the
radiator was blocked. Who would have ever thunk that that would bring it down
to its knees? But, that's an example of all those things that can go wrong that you
have to try to plan for in this stuff. Other questions? Sir? (person speaking in
audience) No, neither. An 800 mhz tmnked radio system is by definition a two-
way device. All radios in an 800 mhz trunked radio system not only listen to
stuff, but they communicate back stuff. Their status, etc., and by definition,
pagers are dumb one-way devices, and no firefighter worth his salt wants to carry
a pager the size of a walkie-talkie and that's why no manufacturers are building
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800 mhz trunked pagers. Okay. Boy, there's a lot of fire departments would love
it if they did, but they are not. Okay. Let's talk about 9-1-1 dispatch. Here's
today's environment in Johnson County. 9-1-1 calls are initially answered at two
places in the County, note I've underlined initially. It's a key point. Place
number one is the Iowa City Police Department where they answer all the calls
dialed from within Iowa City, that includes the campus, by the way, and the
University Heights area, and the campus. Carryon. Then the second place
they're answered is at the Johnson County Sheriffs office for everywhere else in
the County. Next. The Iowa City Police Department radio dispatches for the
Iowa City Police Department, the University Heights Police Department, the Iowa
City Fire Department, and some Johnson County EMS calls. That means the
Johnson County EMS units must have the Iowa City 800 mhz trunked radio, and
they do. Iowa City Police Department transfers 9-1-1 calls for the U of I campus
over to the U of I Police, a couple blocks away. They then radio dispatch the U of
I police, but they are users of the Iowa City 800 mhz trunked radio system.
They're just using a different, well technically it's called a talk group, but most
people would think of it as a channel. Next. Johnson County's Sheriffs office
radio dispatches everybody else in the County. Coralville kind of dispatches for
themselves, except for 9-1-1 calls during the weekday hours. In other words, in
Coralville, if you call the Coralville PD seven-digit nnmber at 2:00 P.M., and you
say, 'Yeah, there's a car parked by a fire hydrant out in front of my house.' The
Coralville Clerk dispatcher will get on the radio channel and tell the Coralville
squad car to go there and nobody at the Sheriffs office got involved. So, in this
task that was just described, about.. .not about, exactly 27 Y, full time equivalent
people are employed at these three dispatch centers. Twenty seven and a half full
time equivalencies. It costs the taxpayers an annual operating expense of
$1,548,958. One clarification, I said costs the taxpayers. I don't know that it's,
or true to say that the people who are employed at the U of I Police Department
cost the taxpayers money. I mean, yes, it's a State institution, but I think a lot of
their money comes from tuitions and grants and that sort of thing, so what they
cost the public, $1,548,000. Now, the handling of wireless 9-1-1 calls, 9-1-1 calls
dialed from cell phones, is becoming a major issue. Partly because they often do
not route to the right 9-1-1 center and they become, come in very spiky spurts,
taxing the staff in small centers. One of the things that I have observed over the
years in my business of pretty much living by traveling through the State of Iowa.
I have a lot of clients in Missouri, lot of clients in Illinois, lot of clients in
Nebraska, and some clients in Iowa, and so I have spent more than my share of
time on 135,180,1380,218, all those other wonderful roads, and nobody enjoyed
the upgrade of 218 better than I did, believe me, because I used to drive to St.
Louis almost weekly, but, one of the things I've noticed in Iowa is when the
weather gets bad, I think all drivers who don't know how to drive in snow migrate
to 180 (laughter) and all decide that they will see how badly they can drive in
snow. I can remember one time driving through Iowa down to Illinois, over
Columbus Day, it would have been about 1998 or 1999, there was a big blizzard
and I counted something like 200 and some odd vehicles in the median on 380
and 80, and you know, about 85% of them were SUV's? Help me understand
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that, but, the reality is this, when the weather gets bad on 180 and everybody sees
that 18-wheeler go over the edge, they're all going to pick up their cell phone and
they're going to call. Well, you know we don't need that many calls calling us
that that 18-wheeler just went over the edge. Usually one'll do it; we don't need
40, but the problem is, not everybody knows that the other 39 people are calling.
Tell you a little side story about that. I have a daughter who lived in Washington
D.C. for a number of years, and I was out in Washington D.C. last May and I saw
something I thought was a great idea. You know, taxi cabs have a light on the
roof that says taxi? Well, in Washington, D.C. that light on the roof has another
light to the left of it, and the light says call 9-1-1. It's not advertising for the
police department. What it is, there's a footswitch inside the taxicab that the cab
driver who is being assaulted or robbed or whatever can surreptitiously hit the
footswitch and that causes this call 9-1-1 thing to blink red. Not a bad idea!
Presumption is that somebody sees it, picks up the cell phone, calls 9-1-1 and
says, 'Hey! Taxicab number 841 is driving down Pennsylvania Avenue and it
looks like the guy's got a problem.' That's not a bad idea. Well, when I looked
at it, thought occurred to me, 'Well, maybe we should have car manufacturers
come up with a sign on the roof of cars - GM is doing it now with all those ugly
antennas they're putting up there. We could add this other thing that says, 'Called
9-1-1.' The party in that car has called 9-1-1, and therefore, the other 87 of you
who think you should call don't have to. That would be kind of nice. But, the
reality is that if you're, for example, the Cedar County Sheriffs Department over
in Tipton? Is that right? If you're the Cedar County Sheriffs Department in
Tipton, you have part ofI80 going through Cedar County, you only got
sometimes one dispatcher on duty? Most of the time two. You're going to have
heck to pay on a snowy day when half the states going in the median on 180 cause
all you're going to be doing is answering those calls. So, that's a big problem
with wireless. Next issue. Yes, the staff and annual operating expenses could be
saved on the narrowly defined tasks of 9-1-1 call-taking and dispatching. Yes, we
could save money, on staff and operating expenses. On the narrowly defined,
now I underlined that, tasks of 9-1-1 call-taking and dispatch. Carryon. We
estimate that about six positions could be saved at about $295,000 per year
savings with better staff flexibility to handle the irregular workloads, better
supervision, better training, better work conditions, consistent provision of
something known as emergency medical dispatch, and I'll explain that in a
moment, and better coordination of public safety operations county-wide, all the
time. Let's talk about EMD. EMD is technically emergency medical dispatch.
Emergency medical dispatch has, in my view, two main components to it. Main
component number one is it empowers and equips and trains the dispatcher to be
able to triage an event on the telephone, and provide immediate life saving
instructions to the caller, so that the caller can deliver effective services to the
party in need, and thereby save that party's life. The classic example is a baby not
breathing. Historically in the old days if a parent was dealing with their baby and
the baby stopped breathing and they call 9-1-1, the conversation on 9-1-1 would
go like this. "Dingalingaling, 9-1-1, where' s your emergency?" And then for the
next 30 seconds, all the dispatcher would hear would be screaming and shrieking
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at the other end of the line, "My baby's not breathing, my baby's not breathing,
my baby's not breathing!" On and on and on and on, and all the dispatcher could
say was, "Ma'am, calm down, calm down." Now the dispatcher can take charge
of the conversation and based on their training, tell the caller exactly how to
deliver emergency breathing, rescue breathing, to the baby and I have personally
been involved in these and there is no more dramatic event that happens in a
dispatch center than for the next sound to come over that phone to be the sound of
a crying baby. That means that the dispatcher did what they should have done.
That means that the caller listened to the dispatcher and did to the baby what
should have been done. Now, pretty tough to do EMD if you got to put the caller
on hold. So you got to be equipped in a situation where you can maintain
continuous communication with that caller. That's element one of EMD - the
delivery of that service. Element two ofEMD is particularly relevant in big urban
areas where you've got a far greater demand for EMS responders than there are
EMS responders able to respond, and that is the whole area of triage, where the
call taker or dispatcher can figure out, 'Gee, do I need an advanced life support
paramedic ambulance on this one or is a basic life support ambulance going to be
okay, or can a fire engine company go and just lift the party back into bed, or can
I just tell the caller to go take an aspirin and call me in the morning' type thing -
that whole range of things. I don't think that that's used a whole lot here because
I think most everything gets a paramedic response, but, in some areas, in some big
urban areas where they have this layering of responses, it can be quite relevant.
Now, in Johnson County today, EMD is provided at the Iowa City Police
Department. It is not provided at the Sheriff s Department. The Sheriff s
Department would like to provide it, but with the existing staffing they have, they
are unable to do it and meet the level of care that would be required to do it well.
That is a very important issue because EMD is not required by law. Because it's
not required by law, it's what's called a discretionary act of the unit of
government, and in a discretionary act that you are not required to provide you
damn well better do it right. Cause if you don't, your liability has increased. So,
the County not feeling comfortable with the staffing is not offering EMD at this
point. You want to add anything to that, Sheriff, or is that an accurate
assessment? Okay. Now, so, remember I started out by saying yes staff and
annual operating expenses could be saved, but not without some issues and
hurdles. Issue number one, a new facility would be required. It might cost up to
$900,000. Now, when I say "might," that's a function of are you going to have to
build it from the ground up or is somebody like a bank, sitting there today, saying,
"Gee, I think we need to move and therefore we're going to make our bank
building available," and it would perfectly suit your purposes and they'll sell it to
you for $350,000. You know, if that happens, more power to you. Second, a new
owner/manager board for this merged dispatch operation would be required.
Now, it's not required by law, it's required by the consultant's rule oflaw. And
the consultant's rule oflaw says that given the opportunity to disagree, over time,
on how 9-1-1 ought to be run, ifit's run by the City, the County will disagree; if
it's run by the County, the City will disagree. And therefore, it should not be run
by either one. It should be run by a new owner/manager board. Some staff,
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remember I said 27 Y, people have jobs now. Some staff might lose their jobs. I
stress might, because one of the recommendations we talked about is part-time to
the extent that some people who are employed today would prefer to work
permanent part-time, rather than full time. Then they might not lose ajob.
Replacement local costs may be required to handle some nondispatched tasks at
the Iowa City Police Department, currently handled by dispatchers. I don't know
how many of you know it, but if you go out this door right over here and you see
the one that says Police, if you walk in that door you approach a window. That
window is the window into the emergency communications center. That is where
customers go to the Iowa City Police Department. So, to the extent that that party
approaching that window is being assisted by a dispatcher, and they usually are,
and to the extent that those dispatchers aren't there anymore, and under this plan
they wouldn't be, either some other mechanism is going to have to be established
for helping these people, or somebody's going to have to be hired or tasked to
replace the dispatcher who's not there. So that's the replacement costs that I'm
talking about at the Iowa City P.D. Possibly also at the Sheriffs Department,
although at the Sheriffs Department 8:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday, they
have their Records Unit which is handled to do walk-in traffic for the jail
building, so it would be somewhat of a less of an issue than it would be at the
City. Also, at the University of Iowa when you walk into their, I think it's kind of
like a modified trailer that they operate out of, if you walk into that, the party
you're greeting is the dispatcher. And obviously if the dispatcher isn't there,
somebody's going to have to greet you. These costs, that I've just described,
could cut into or wipe out the above $295,000 savings. Next. Here's a sad fact of
life. You're too small to save big. Next. In all the studies that we have done, it is
rare for a two or three PSAP, public safety answering point, two or three PSAP
small county to save enough money by merging to offset the local discretionary
expenditures for replacing 9-1-1 dispatchers as front desk receptionists. That's a
fact of life. Next. But, and this is what makes this interesting. Part of this is due
to our belief that any new merged PSAP should be adequately staffed, properly
equipped, have proper training of supervision, and employ the best practices for
9-1-1. We believe that if you're going to do this, you should do it right, and
here's the caveat. All too often, the participant PSAPs in such a merger don't do
all of the above in their stand-alone configuration as well as they should, or would
like to. Remember, I talked about the County? They don't do EMD because they
don't have enough staff. Well, then we really go to the next bullet. So, the real
true comparison of cost would be to upgrade all the stand-alone dispatch centers
for the best practice standards across the board and then determine that cost and
then compare that cost to the cost of a merged PSAP. So, under that model, if we
took the Sheriffs Department dispatch center which has two people on duty, add
a third 24x7, that's really adding about five bodies, that's really adding about
$200,000 in money. So now the County ought to be spending $200,000 more
than they are spending to be up to speed, then the opportunity to save more money
would be present. Does that make sense? Okay. Ultimately, we the consultant,
we think you should organize, staff, and operate your 9-1-1 service in the manner
that will provide the best, most effective, and most coordinated service for the
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public and the responders. Next. In Johnson County we think that is one
consolidated dispatch center, PSAP. And you might even save some money in
the process. That's the kicker. You ought not do this to save money, but you
might save a little. You ought to do it to deliver a better service and be better
coordinated. Conclusions, Iowa City needs to upgrade or replace its current radio
system. We recommend replacement with a highly interoperable Project 25
compliant digital two-site simulcast system. Johnson County needs to upgrade
their radio, some of which they don't own. That's a key point. A lot of those
radios are owned by fire departments and, mostly fire departments. Johnson
County never bought those radios for those fire departments, and if those fire
departments need to have new radios because of this narrow banding stuff, those
fire departments are going to stand to spend some money on those new radios.
So, that's going to be an issue as to who is going to pay for that in the County.
We recommend that the County join the above new Iowa City system and the City
system be built to be county-wide, meaning four sites. This system should have
shared ownership and cost and serve more than just public safety agencies. 9-1-1
dispatch in the County is more fragmented than is desirable. We recommend that,
at a minimum, 9-1-1 call-taking and all dispatching tasks be virtually and
electronically coordinated through what we call a server-based 9-1-1 platform and
CAD system, which could be operated from today's three separate PSAPs. What
we're saying here is that we think that the best way to do this is to put everybody
in one room and obviously if they're all in one room they're operating on the
same phone system, they're operating on the same computer-aided dispatch
system, they're operating on the same radio system. We think that's the best way,
but, if for reasons of politics or money, it cannot be done to put them all in the
same room, then we think that at a minimum they ought to be operating on the
same phone system, the same computer-aided dispatch system, and the same radio
system, but from three separate places. Go ahead. However, our main
recommendation is that there be only one PSAP. Obviously, if you do this one up
here, you gain some of the operational coordination advantages. You gain none
of the potential cost-saving advantages. Finally, we recommend ajoint powers, in
Iowa they're called a 28E Board, to own and manage such a facility and its
various systems. A candidate for that, by the way, could be the Johnson County
9-1-1 Joint Services Board, which is already a 28E board, and gets the money
from the 9-1-1 surcharge. Now the money from the 9-1-1 surcharge is not enough
and I think, under law, could not be used to build this building and pay the
salaries of all ofthese dispatchers, but it is a vehicle for money and it is a vehicle
for management of this operation. So, we recommend the set agency be
independent of any existing public or public safety agency. The Joint Services
Board in the County is independent. It is not a child of the County Board. It is
not a child of the City Council. The membership on it is representative of the
various public safety and public entities in the County. Time for questions and
answers, and one more click, Mike. For those who have any need to contact me
going forward, that's my contact info. There's a set of business cards up here if
you want them. It's now 2:30; about an hour and half after we started. It's time
for questions and answers. Sir?
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(person speaking in audience)
Linnee/There's two answers to that question. Answer number one is how long would
said new system likely work? Question number two is, or answer number two is,
how long would it be before said new system is dangerously obsolete? The
answer to question number one, 20 years. The system could easily work for 20
years. The answer to question number two is somewhat up in the air, as is always
going to be the case because of technological advances. Although the one area
that I am most comforted by is this, one thing that can't be changed in the world
and that's the laws of natural physics. And the laws of natural physics dictate that
you cannot manufacture radio spectrum, and the only way you can get radio
spectrum is to use what's there and to use it as effectively as possible. And with
the FCC's action regarding the 700 mhz spectrum, they're allocating more
spectrum at 700 mhz than is there today at 800 and VHF, nation wide. So, that
band should be enough for the next 40 to 50 years, unless all hell breaks loose in
this country. And even if it did, God help us for finding more spectrum, because
there are so many commercial demands for it that now the Federal government,
quite frankly, I talked earlier about the slowness of the broadcasters moving off
their TV channels to clear up 700 mhz, well, you know the Feds on one hand say,
'Gee, we want you to get off these channels so the public safety can get access to
them.' Isn't that nice for the campaign pusher? Well, here's why they really
want these TV stations to get off the channels, because there's a bunch of other
channels in there that they want and they could auction them off. In 1996, when
the FCC auctioned offthe radio spectrum that ended up with the 1.2 ghz, I forget
the number, but I think it was $6 billion into the U.S. Treasury. Remember that
one year where we had an actual Treasury surplus? That's why. Because of the
auction of the spectrums. So, in answer to your question, I think practically
speaking, a Project 25 compliant 800-700 mhz trunked radio system is not only
going to electronically work, but be functional and operable effectively for not
less than 20 years. That's my best guess. Other questions? Now, put that into
context. VHF conventional as it's being used today been out there since roughly
1950, and I have seen some equipment that old still in use, but it's so simple.
It.. .yes, it's obsolete, but it doesn't not work anymore. Other questions,
comments? Anybody surprised by the outcome? Anybody say. ..did anybody say
to themselves coming in, 'Well sure he's going to say we can save a whole bunch
of money by merging dispatch.' Not a whole bunch, a little bit. Yes, ma'am?
(person speaking in audience)
Linnee/Excellent question. The question is, she wants me to talk about add-ons to the
system, and by the system do you mean the radio system?
(person talking from audience)
Linnee/Okay. That's an excellent question. First off, let me ask you a question, when
you say other entities, are these other entities inside Johnson County?
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(person speaking in audience)
Linnee/Okay, they're outside Johnson County. All right. As it relates to the radio
system, the radio system that I've described for $6,917,000 would be designed to
cover the geography of Johnson County. If...is Cedar County immediately to the
east? Okay. If Cedar County said, 'Hey, we'd like to be a part of that,' your
radio system is not going to be sending adequate radio signal into Cedar County
to provide their needs. Por Cedar County to be a part of it, they would have to put
up one, two, three, four, five towers in their county. Now, let me give you a
perfect example of that, the one I mentioned earlier, Washington County,
Nebraska. I was the consulting engineer on a big radio system for Omaha and
Douglas County, Nebraska, in 2001. 22 channels, seven sites. Douglas County is
geographically a small county. 22 channels, seven sites, covers the city of Omaha
in Douglas County like a glove. In order to cover it like a glove, we had to put a
couple of tower sites on the north end of Douglas County, shooting radio signal
into downtown Omaha. A few months later I got hired by Washington County,
Nebraska, the county to the north, and they said take a look at our - in their case,
be a 75-year-old two-way radio infrastructure, tell us what we can do. And I said,
'Well, what you ought to do is you ought to add on to the Douglas County
trunked radio system.' So whereas Washington County, Nebraska - were
wanting to go in there, put in its own system, not connected to anything else - five
sites, $8 million. What we did is we added on to the Douglas County, Omaha
system, three sites, $4 million, and full interoperability with the Douglas County
system, so any school bus, fire truck, ambulance, or law enforcement vehicle from
Washington County, when they drive into Omaha, can participate in the radio
system when they're in Omaha and now we're building that same thing out over
into Pottawattamie County across the river. So, it's a very perceptive question
because the big expense in this system is not in the individual tower sites. The
big expense is in the head end, and with the one head end you can keep adding
tower sites on. The system up in Minnesota has a head end of, two head ends -
redundant, in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and they're continuing to add stuff in
St. Cloud, Minnesota; Rochester, Minnesota; Grand Rapids, Minnesota - they're
going to go up to Duluth, Minnesota, all riding off the head end in the Twin
Cities. That's where the huge efficiency multiplier in this system is. Now, 9-1-1.
I indicated in my first comments, I said most of these dispatch center merger
studies involved within a county, well quite frankly they shouldn't. I mean if!
wrote the rules, which I don't, well, I will tell you a story. I was testifying at a
Legislative hearing in the State of South Dakota about two years ago. The
Governor in South Dakota said, by the way, South Dakota has 58 counties and
there was one dispatch center in each of the 58 counties, so 58 dispatch centers,
and the South Dakota Governor said, 'We don't need 58 of these 9-1-1 centers.
That's crazy. We need two - one in Sioux 'Palls and one in Rapid City. That's
all,' passed the bill outlawing everybody else having a dispatch center. So I was
asked to testify... but there was another caveat here. In South Dakota, all the 9-1-
1 money, like Iowa, all the 9-1-1 money went to the county. Well, this bill also
would have had all the 9-1-1 money go to the State, and so I was asked to testify
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about this by one of my clients in South Dakota and I went to the hearing and I
said, "Folks, the question is not whether or not there should be 58 9-1-1 dispatch
centers in South Dakota. The question is should there be 58 counties in South
Dakota." And I would put the same question to any Iowa audience. The question
is not should there be 99 dispatch counties, let's assume there was one per county.
The question is should there be 99 counties. Probably not, probably something on
the order of 15 would be a nice number, but God help the legislature that
introduces that bill. (laughter) But, I will say this, that if you build a state-of-the-
art 9-1-1 dispatch center here, with the state-of-the-art two-way radio system that
can modularly be added onto. Going to Cedar County on the east - who's on
your west? Going to Iowa County on the west. Going to counties south, and
saying, 'Would you like to come in?' is not very difficult. The 9-1-1 system is
very robust and calls can be pretty much routed wherever you want to have them
be routed, so that's a no-brainer. Building a southeast Iowa regional
communications system, and I don't know ifI'd go as big as southeast regional
dispatch center. I might have four or five in the southeast Iowa area ultimately, is
something worth thinking about. I'm not sure I want to go there yet, but it is
something worth thinking about. Does that answer your question? Okay.
Others? Sure.
(person speaking in audience)
Linnee/Yes, yes, backup. Obviously, if you're going to have a critical infrastructure
element like a 9-1-1 dispatch center where all calls get answered and all
emergency services are dispatched from, you gotta ask yourself the question,
'What are we going to do when it blows up? What are we going to do when it
burns down?' And the answer to that is two-fold: A) you got to worry about
where is the phone going to get answered, and B) you gotta worry about where
are people going to talk on the radio from. The phone answering part is pretty
much a nonissue. It's pretty much been taken care of by Qwest and the enhanced
9-1-1 network that serves Iowa today. There's something called "condition free
alternate route" and pretty much at the flip of a switch or a couple key strokes on
a keyboard, all 9-1-1 calls that are, that think they want to go to place "x", can
instead go to place "y", and today you do have - do you know your conditions for
your alternate route for the City? Johnson County - today Johnson County has
the condition three alternate route for the City and vice versa. It would be very
easy for Cedar Rapids to be the condition three alternate route, or Linn County, or
Cedar County, or anybody else you want. Des Moines could be your condition
three alternate route, but that raises the next question. Talking on the radio. Well,
what kind of radio system we're talking about putting in here - the 800 mhz
trunked radio system - it would be very easy, let's just say - I don't think this is
pretty practical, but let's take for example Cedar County. We built the new
dispatch center in Cedar County a couple years ago for those folks, and let's say
we want to use that for the backup for Johnson County. It would be very easy and
only cost about, oh, maybe $15,000 to put enough what we call RF control
stations over in the Cedar County dispatch center to reach into the Johnson
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County 800 mhz trunked radio system, and then they, from the Cedar County
dispatch center, could do everything on the radio that could be done from here at
the dispatch center that had to be vacated. So, via using Cedar County we get all
the 9-1-1 calls there, we'd be able to do the radio out of there, and then the
question is, are there enough bodies there within the first hour to deal with the
problem, because obviously eventually some bodies from here are going to have
to go there and help out. Does that answer the question?
(person speaking in audience)
Linnee/Y eah, for those who aren't aware of it, and frankly I don't know that I disagree
with this, but Iowa's a little bit different than most other states. All the wire lines
9-1-1 money - what's the surcharge in the county today?
(person speaking in audience)
Linnee/45 cents on every wired line comes to the 9-1-1 joint services board here and the
state doesn't have a, can't touch it. However, the (TAPE ENDS) he doesn't get it
at home. John Benson uses that money to enter into agreements with and pay all
kinds of bills to Qwest and a bunch of wireless phone companies, to facilitate 9-1-
1 and they have also bought a bunch of stufflike mapping dispatch computers for
a whole bunch of people around the State ofIowa with that money. What they're
not doing, is they're not giving any of it back to counties to pay the salaries of the
people who have to answer all the calls. And that's a real sore spot. Sir?
(person speaking in audience)
Linnee/Okay, they can't by State law (can't hear). Yes?
(person speaking in audience)
Linnee/Diminished coverage, no doubt. Generally not, generally on a multi-site,
simulcast system you accept diminished coverage, but it depends upon what you
say when you say it goes down. There's several levels of degradation in these
systems. One level of degradation is what's called site trunking. Under site
tmnking what went down was the interconnectivity between the sites, but each of
the sites themselves is still fully functional and healthy, they just can't talk to each
other. Then we go into site trunking, and site tmnking provides the same
coverage in that general area and the same capacity as was there before. It's just
that you lose some of the tmnking capability. But generally speaking, you design
the system as such that if you lose one of the sites you can still survive. If you
lose two of the sites, you can probably still survive. Almost nobody puts in
redundant sites in a multi-site simulcast, except maybe people who have more
money than you know what. Go ahead.
(person speaking in audience)
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Absolutely, but, there's a big caveat to that question. Homeland Security is
Federal money in all cases. Now, in some cases it's Federal money that has been
dumped into a State pot, and then the State decides how to spend it out of that pot,
and other cases it's Federal money that's sent directly to the cities and/or the
counties. Now, there are numerous cases around the U.S., the system up in
Minnesota is a classic example where huge amounts of Homeland Security grant
money have been used to build out the system. The original system was built
with taxpayer money, but or I should.. ..Homeland Security money is taxpayer
money, but was built with State taxpayer money, but caveat - there's been a
whole lot of political heat in the past couple years about the way the Feds have
disseminated Homeland Security money. They have tended to disseminate it on a
political basis. Meaning, they wanted to make darn sure that North Dakota, South
Dakota, Montana, Alaska, Puerto Rico, everybody else got their fair political
share of the money, and we're in a country that has a Senate, that means
Wyoming's share of the money is exactly the same as California's share of the
money. Now, they've gotten a lot of heat for that. The Senators from New York
and California are saying, 'This is ridiculous! We need more money in New York
City than they need in Cheyenne, Wyoming.' So, those of you whO...the chiefs
of police and fire and sheriff who are in the room, are closer to this than I am... I
think will agree with me that if there was largesse in Homeland Security grant
money two years ago, ain't so much anymore. Agreed? Particularly in Iowa. For
some reason in Congress, they don't think Iowa is the primary Al Queda target.
Although, if! was looking at Iowa, this city would be one ofthe primary targets
within Iowa because of the fact that the University and all of the research and the
fact that there's huge people here on half a dozen weekends of every year. I
mean, that's what you want is a big crowd. Yes?
(person speaking in audience)
Linnee/Okay, meaning you work for the County or the State or the Feds or...
(person talking)
Linnee/...you're a County employee. Okay, all right, understood. You're the Director of
Emergency Management in old terms. Got it.
(person talking)
Linnee/Oh sure, Woodbury County, yeah. (person talking) Absolutely, our firm is
handling it.
(person talking)
Linnee/Just about. It's not that late either. The grant, oh, not at all. The grant was a
Department of Homeland Security inoperable communications equipment grant,
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September of2003 was the date of the grant award. So, it's just a tad over two
years old and virtually all of the equipment has been in.
(person talking)
Linnee/Yeah, but understand, that's not just Woodbury County. That's also Union
County, South Dakota and Dakota County, Nebraska. It's a three-county system.
(person talking)
LinneeIBacked by the State?
(person talking)
Linnee/Well, the system in Woodbury County, Union County, and Dakota County is a
Motorola Project 25 800 mhz trunked radio system. Ifwhat gets put in here is, I
don't care the brand name, a Project 25 800 mhz trunked radio system, it is fully
compatible with what's being done both in Woodbury County and in
Pottawattamie County. And, I, you know, I didn't know that it was (can't
understand). I thought it was six and a quarter myself.
(person talking)
Linnee/Okay, well, that's State money. I'm not aware of that.
(person talking)
Linnee/Okay.
(person talking)
Linnee/Right.
(person talking)
Linnee/South of this county but in Iowa? Okay, okay.
(person talking)
Linnee/Oh, the Iowa Communications Network, yes.
(person talking)
Linnee/Well, that's a wire line and fiber network, and that's appropriate for
interconnecting emergency operating centers in various counties and cities, but
the ICN does not, I mean, you can't carry the ICN on your belt. And so what
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we're talking about, what's called land-mobile radio. Now, at the dispatch center,
there might connectivity through lCN to other control points. That would be
appropriate.
(person talking)
Lirmee/Absolutely, and yeah, the fact.. .it's entirely feasible. We talked about backups.
It would be entirely feasible using the lCN, the Iowa Communications Network,
which is a state-wide fiber optic network. It would be entirely feasible for the Des
Moines' city police department, presumably the biggest dispatch center in the
state, the Des Moines' city police department could be backup for any or all
counties in the state. Now, not at once, but if any one county went down, if that
county's radio system was connected to the lCN so that up in Des Moines they
could push a button and come out on the two-way radio down here. It could
easily be a backup. Yes. Other questions, comments? Okay. It's 3:00 or
thereabouts.. . yes?
(person talking)
Linnee/Yes.
(person talking)
Lirmee/Everybody, yeah.
(person talking)
Lirmee/Well, everybody's going to be impacted by the narrow banding requirements.
That's a fact. There will be no wide-band VHF charmels after 2013 and anybody
who's licensed on them today will have to be relicensed. Just for a little bit of
techy here, if you look at the radio frequency license, ifthere's four digits past the
dot, that's a narrow band charmel. If there's three digits past the dot, that's a
wide-band charmel. So for example, 155.0125 would be a narrow band charmel.
155.13 would be a wide-band charmel. Now, having said that. This is where it
gets a little complicated in Johnson County. This goes to the question of should
Iowa City build and design a two-site trunk radio system for the City only, and
then some day down the road, the County decides what they're going to do. Or,
should the decision be made that we're going to build a four-site county-wide
system, and maybe this, maybe we build a four-site county-wide system and
maybe the County participates in the proportion share of that infrastructure only,
but the County doesn't use it to talk to fire trucks, squad cars, so on and so forth
for a couple of years, and over that couple of year period of time, the County
gradually acquires the end-user radios so as to participate on that system, and
sometime around 2011, 2012, they have finally replaced all of the end-user radios
with trunk radios that would operate on the new system, then they never would
have to upgrade any of the VHF stuff, but they also would not have to buy 400 or
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500 brand-new radios at one fell swoop at about $3,000 a pop. So, it'd be kinda
like wiring your house, when you build a house -like my house, is a two-story
house. When I bought my house there was stuff on the first floor and there was a
vacant attic, but the attic had wires up there and plumbing stack and all that sort
of stuff, so when I finally got around to having kids, I had places to put them. Be
the same concept here - you'd build the infrastructure, but you wouldn't
necessarily buy the subscriber units out in the county until a couple of years down
the road. Go ahead.
(person talking)
Linnee/That's an excellent question, and it's a classic example of the chicken and the
egg. One school of thought says no unit of local government...given the fact that
the State explicitly said they're looking at this, the State...what's it called? The
Statewide Interoperable Radio System, the.. .ISIRS, Iowa Statewide Interoperable
Radio System. Given the fact that the State has explicitly said they're looking
into this, a school of thought would say, any city and county in the state that
spends nickel one on anything is crazy. Let the State come in and spend their
money and then we'll crawl under the blanket that the State will build. That's
school of thought number one. School of thought number two says, he who waits
for the State to act will grow gray hair in the process (laughter). And that's not
just Iowa, that's any state. And so school of thought number two says we're
going to do our own thing first, or we're going to see to it that our own thing is
probably the same kind of thing the State thinks it's going to do. Then when the
State finally gets off the dime, A) we will have done it the way we think it should
be done for our area and we don't have to play second fiddle to those pointy
headed bureaucrats in Des Moines; B) the State isn't stupid. They're going to
come to us and they're going to say, 'Okay, we're building a state-wide radio
system.' Interstate 80 is only marginally important in the whole state scheme.
Interstate 80 only goes right through the middle of Johnson County. Gee, I guess
we got to have radio signal around 180, don't we? Hmmmm, should we spend
$500,000 for each of a handful of towers, up and down 180, or should we go
knock on the door of Johnson County and say, 'Gee, can we just add a couple of
repeaters at your tower sites that are already there.' And save the State mega
bucks. Well, I think the latter is much more likely, and let me give you a perfect
example of that. State of Minnesota, they built this big system in the metro area
that was not a state project. It was a project of an entity called the Metropolitan
Radio Board. Now, the state was a member agency, but just like any other
agency. Now the system is being built out state-wide, but, the way it's being built
out state-wide is the city of St. Cloud, a city 75 miles northwest of Minneapolis
on 194, has built, using their money, the first out-state expansion of the system.
Itasca County and the city of Grand Rapids, using their money, are going to built
the second out-state expansion. And Rochester and Olmsted County using their
money are building the third out-state expansion. Then, when the state comes out
and the state already has a legislatively approved plan that has divided the state
into seven built-out regions, when the state builds out and they go into that region,
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they're going to give some of that money to Rochester, Itasca County, and St.
Cloud to defray the costs that they put in up front. So, and under that model, I
think the local areas are the winners because they didn't have to put up with the
state crap in putting in their own system. Okay? Sir?
(person speaking in audience)
Linnee/Question is how do the joint communications centers bill in the future. Most of
them bill in a fashion that I am not totally comfortable with. They bill in a
fashion that is how many widgets did we make for the Iowa City P.D. 'Oh,38%
of all widgets we made last year, and our budget was oh, a million bucks? Here's
your bill for $380,000.' I don't like that model. I don't mind it so much when it's
a big entity like the Iowa City P.D., but I worry about it a lot if there' s a - who
can give me the name of the smallest police department in the county?
(person speaking)
LinneelHow many cops? Three, okay. So they have a budget of $400,000 maybe at the
outside, if that. I don't like.. .ifI'm the chief of police of University Heights, I
don't want the fact that my officer picked up a two-way and called in a traffic
stop, I don't want that to cost money. I don't want there to be an incremental cost
with him picking up the microphone and running a driver's license check. I want
him, her, to be able to do what they need to do and ought to do to be effective and
to be safe. And I don't want my bill to go up and down every month, because I
have seen cases where a person in a chair, like the Chief of Police of University
Heights, would issue a memo to his cops - it's November and his budget year's
almost over and he's running out of money. He issues a memo to his cops, 'Don't
call in traffic stops in December. We can't afford it.' Does that mean don't do
the traffic stop? No, just don't tell anybody on the two-way. If you don't tell
anybody on the two-way, the meter didn't run and we didn't have to pay for it.
So, I don't like that. I prefer a model that looks at two ways of paying. Or, not
two ways, dividing paying in two ways. It takes the total cost -let's say that $2
million a year to run the thing and it says all right, we have a budge of $2 million.
We're going to take this budget and we're going to split it in half. This half over
here is going to be shared on the basis of population. This half over here is going
to be shared on the basis of assessed valuation. So, a million of the $2 million
gets shared by population. Iowa City's got 40% of the County's population?
That about right? So, of this million over here, Iowa City would pay $400,000.
Okay, the next one. The other million is going to be shared by assessed valuation.
I don't know how your assessed valuation compares with that of the rest of the
county, but let's say it was 52% of the total county's assessed valuation, so that
million you'd pay $520,000. So, 520, 400, 920 out of a total budget of$2 million,
is how that would work. Now, I don't, don't take those numbers to the bank, but
that's the model I'm favorable towards because generally speaking, assessed
valuation does reflect ability to pay. Generally speaking, population does reflect
demands of service. Now, you have a huge thing in here that muddies this whole
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up, whole thing up, and that's the University. What is the population of the
University? It doesn't have one. You know, the University has no more
population than, I'm familiar with this so I'll use this example, the Minnesota
State Fairgrounds has on Labor Day, which is 120,000 non-population. You
know, so I don't know how you figure that out. I...I did a study up in Story
County and we had the same issue with Iowa State. I think with an entity like that
that doesn't have real population, but does have service demands, you look at a
flat fee, a negotiated flat fee. Other questions, comments? One more, go ahead.
(person speaking in audience)
LinneelExcellent question, excellent question, yeah, two items. Back about 1994, I was
heavily involved in promoting the concept of this big regional radio system up in
the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and there was one individual who asked a question
like that at a public seminar, and say, 'Why don't you wait for lower orbit satellite
radio?' And I should point out, this individual was a consultant who had over 30
entities in the Twin City and metropolitan area nnder contract, and he did not
want one big regional radio system because he was not the consultant on it.
Okay? He's now deceased, but I put that in the back of my head and I says,
'Well, it ain't here. We need stuff right now, it ain't here.' So I put that in the
back of my mind. Recently, I was in Detroit and I rented a car that had a satellite
radio in it, and I was driving through an underpass, or under an underpass about
three blocks long, didn't work. Satellite radio didn't work. So, I think for
purposes of land-mobile communication, satellite is never going to be functional
because you need to be able to talk in places where you're not going to be able to
see or hear the satellite. That's issue number one. The next technology coming
down the road is something called SDR, Software Defined Radio. Software
Defined Radio is in developmental stage right now and it says that a radio is
essentially a dump brick and through software, we can tell this radio how to
behave. We can tell it what frequency it ought to be on, what band width it ought
to be on, what protocol it ought to use, and that certainly strikes me as something
that is doable, but I don't believe that changes the infrastructure of two-way
radios. It does change the access devices oftwo-way radio, if you choose to. But
it still means that you're going to have a fixed infrastructure out there. And the
other problem with SDR is, I don't care how good the software is, there are
certain issues with two-way radio that make it very difficult for a radio that wants
to operate at 800 mhz to also be able to operate at VHF. Those have to do with
the antenna and the wave form, and for that very reason, this 1.9 ghz cell phone
without any antenna at all will not operate at 800 mhz. So, I'm a little skeptical.
Do you have anything you want to add on that?
(person talking)
Linnee/Right, so I think I'm relatively comfortable with my statement of earlier that
certainly for the next 20 to 25 years, what we have is what we're going to have.
Other questions, comments? Okay, I want to make one closing comment. I have,
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as indicated earlier on, I've been doing this for a number of years, and in the past
two weeks, I have seen some real hope. Monday night oflast week, I think it
was... Wednesday night oflast week, Mike and I were out, and you're not even
going to believe this, Zillah, Washington, as opposed to Sela, Washington. This
is in Yakima County, Washington. Don't laugh. Yakima County's a big county,
it's about 250,000 people. City of Yakima is in there, and they're looking at the
same thing, same sort of issue out there. And we had a meeting of the Yakima
County Council of Governments and we had 64 people at the meeting, dinner
meeting. We had to pay $16 a head. 64 people representing City Council and the
County Board through Yakima County, and I started the meeting out by saying
the problem we have with studies like this is usually our customer is somebody
like this fella right here, Captain Widmer in the Police Department, and we talk to
him and we give him his report and he doesn't like the idea and it never goes any
further, because there's no public will or political will behind it. Well, the fact
that we had 65 local elected officials in this God-forsaken place last Wednesday
night on a night the fog was so bad you couldn't see your headlights, much less in
front of your headlights, was amazing. The fact that we have this kind of a
turnout here today of people who apparently are interested in this topic. I'm
guessing that not all of you are local elected officials. Is that a reasonable guess?
I. . . it makes my heart warm, and it's good to see that people are getting interested
in these questions because a lot of the way things are set up in the U.S. today, they
were set up this way by default. They were set up this way because nobody ever
got involved and said they ought to be set up any other way. So, I think, I
encourage you, I commend you for your involvement, and I wish Iowa City and
Johnson County well in the future pursuits of this question. Thank you.
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