Floyd County public safety agencies consider replacement communications system

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Floyd County law enforcement agencies, fire departments and other emergency services may be asking the county to help pay for a new communications system that could cost somewhere around $5 million.

Members of the Floyd County Communications Commission and the Floyd County 911 Service Board held a joint meeting last week to discuss a proposal by Motorola Solutions Inc. to provide the county with new console and portable radios, pagers, software and other equipment needed to begin using ISICS – the Iowa Statewide Interoperable Communications System.

Shari Schmitz, senior account manager for Iowa with Motorola Solutions Inc., spent much of the meeting last Thursday evening going over what ISICS is and what it could potentially offer Floyd County emergency response agencies.

Schmitz said Motorola won a competitive state bid in 2015 to build and maintain ISICS, a statewide digital communications network that was started to ensure effective communication among public safety agencies throughout the state. It currently has more than 32,000 radios in operation among almost 3,000 “talkgroups,” and has handled almost 2.4 million radio calls.

She said Motorola maintains 92 sites across the state to provide baseline coverage, which is defined as a minimum of 95% successful call completion when a radio talk button is pressed.

In additional to public safety organizations, ISICS is also being used by schools, municipal utilities, secondary roads departments, city public works departments and county conservation departments, she said.

Various problems have been identified with the current mix of different brands and ages of equipment and inconsistent programming on the radios owned by different departments in Floyd County.

For example, some fire departments are having problems with their pager systems reliably responding to dispatch calls, and the Charles City Police Department and AMR ambulance service have identified problems communicating with the county dispatchers, even sometimes within a few blocks of the antenna tower located at City Hall.

Ben Chatfield, the chief of the Floyd Volunteer Fire Department, has taken a lead role in working on problems with communications among agencies in the county, and has helped those agencies draw up a list of the equipment that would be needed to move everyone to ISICS.

Among the most expensive items is another radio tower that is proposed to be installed in a farm field southwest of Rockford, to help improve communications in the western part of the county. The system would also use the existing tower at City Hall in downtown Charles City.

In addition to paying for the new tower, the county would have to pay to have fiber optic cable available from the Charles City Police Department to the tower and from the tower to the ISICS site in Mason City.

Chatfield said OmniTel already has fiber less than a mile from the proposed new tower site, and about a quarter mile from the Mason City ISICS sites.

In addition to the new tower and upgrading the existing tower, a complete new system would require 155 portable radios, 60 mobile radios for vehicles, eight base radios and 173 pagers for firefighters. In addition, another 5 mobile radios might be needed for emergency medical service (EMS) communications.

For example, according to a spreadsheet that Schmitz said she and Chatfield put together, the Charles City Police Department would require 22 portable radios for officers to carry with them and eight mobile radios for vehicles. The Floyd County Sheriff’s Office would require 25 portable radios and 13 mobile radios.

Keith Starr, the Charles City Council representative on the Communications Advisory Board and chair of the 911 Service Board, said he wanted to be sure that effective communications is available inside buildings such as schools and businesses such as Cambrex.

“We don’t protect cornfields, we protect people,” he said.

Schmitz said the coverage contract is to provide a signal that could be received within most houses and a “typical” industrial building, but there will be cases where the unique structure and equipment in a particular building may prevent communication with dispatch from inside the building.

But even then, she said, responders in the building would still be able to talk with each other, and with mobile units parked outside the buildings.

There are also ways to add repeaters or boosters inside buildings to make sure radio communication works, and some companies are choosing to do that to make sure they are covered if emergency responders are called to their locations.

Lt. Travis Bartz with the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office recently helped map radio coverage in the county to, among other things, help determine where a new tower might be needed. He said that when using an ISICS radio he was able to get signals in areas of Floyd County where the current radios don’t reliably connect, using the existing ISICS towers in neighboring counties.

Currently Worth, Cerro Gordo, Franklin, Butler and Chickasaw counties have their own ISICS systems bordering Floyd County.

Talking with state troopers, Bartz said, about 85% of Floyd County is already covered.

“Two towers in Floyd County will make it even better,” Bartz said.

Chatfield said they had been talking about radio problems and getting a new system for a long time.

“In five years we’ve looked at this nothing better has come along,” he said.

The group also talked about financing and installation times.

Schmitz said it would take about four to seven months to get new radios, 12 to 16 months to convert the existing tower at City Hall to the ISICS system, and 18 to 24 months to get the new tower installed near Rockford.

Motorola currently offers a lease plan that can go for three, five, seven or 10 years. Some counties have used an essential services levy to pay for the system.

As part of the state contract, Motorola is also currently offering equipment at a 50% discount.

Chatfield said one proposal is for the individual departments to pay 30% of the cost of their own radios and pagers, then they would own them and be responsible for maintenance, repairs and replacements.

Several years ago, then Motorola presented a proposal to the county, the price tag was around $4 million. A system now could be closer to $5 million, Chatfield said.

The county Board of Supervisors would be asked to carry the brunt of the costs, and the potential for putting some of the county’s remaining $1.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds toward the project was mentioned. The issue has not been brought before the Board of Supervisors yet.

The 911 board also has almost $1 million in its operating fund. It gets revenue through a monthly state surcharge on every phone line in the county capable of connecting to 911. The surcharge is administered by and shared with the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

The Communications Board passed a motion to get final specifications to Schmitz so that she can have a proposal with prices back to the groups by May 26.

The 911 Board also passed a motion for Schmitz to design the system they had talked about including repeaters and radio chargers.

The groups tentatively plan to hold another meeting June 1 to look at the Motorola proposal and decide the next steps.