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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMINUTES - 03272001 - SD.4 \ 'S r ISS TO:� , BOARD OF SUPERVISORS FROM: Warren E. Rupf, Sheriff-Coroner Contra Costa DATE: March 5, 2001 County SUBJECT: Public Safety Communications SPECIFIC REQUEST(S)OR RECOMMENDATION(S)&BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION I. RECOMMENDATION ACTION: AUTHORIZE the Sheriff-Coroner or designee to request 800 Mhz frequencies from the National Public Safety Planning and Advisory Committee (NPSPAC); DIRECT the Sheriff-Coroner to work with the County Administrator's Office and the Department of Information Technology to identify funding for installation of a regional, 800 Mhz, trunked, public safety communications system. Il. FINANCIAL IMPACT: NONE. The requested action has no financial impact. III. BACKGROUND/REASON(S) FOR RECOMMENDED ACTION(S): The communications equipment used in Contra Costa County is nearly obsolete. The aging system and geographic terrain of the county prevents many public safety jurisdictions from communicating with each other and, in many cases, with themselves. Sheriffs Office technical staff have been working with staff from the County Administrator's Office and the Department of Information Technology to identify possible solutions to our communications crisis. The Sheriffs Office recently funded a communications engineering and technical design study to determine the feasibility of an 800 Mhz communications system. This study concluded that an 800 Mhz system can provide the solution to our communications crisis. In order to implement an 800 Mhz system, the County requires additional 800 Mhz channels. These channels are under the authority of NPSPAC. Requests for these channels are being accepted between February 1 and April 1, 2001. A finite number of channels are available; if Contra Costa does not request and receive the number of channels needed during this window of opportunity, these channels will be allotted elsewhere and our ability to implement the needed system may be lost. By prior Board action, the County's Director of Information Technology is authorized to apply for required communications licenses. Since the Board Order serves the purpose of requesting 800 MHZ frequencies for a public safety communications system, it is recommended that the Sheriff be authorized to request these specific frequencies for this limited purpose. NPSPAC requires that we commit to funding for this project within 18 months of the channels being designated for our use. If, at the end of the 18-month period, funding has not been committed, the County must return the channels to NPSPAC. CONTINUED ON ATTACHMENT: NO SIGNATURE: -'RECOMMENDATION OF COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR RECOMMENDATI N OF BOARD COMMITTEE PROVE OTHER SIGNATURE (S): ACTION OF BOARD O OTHER VOTE OF SUPERVISORS SEE ADDENDUM FOR BOARD ACTION I HEREBY CERTIFY THAT THIS IS A TRUE UNANIMOUS (ABSENT AND CORRECT COPY OF AN ACTION TAKEN AYES: NOES: AND ENTERED ON THE MINUTES OF THE BOARD ABSENT: ABSTAIN: OF SUPERVISORS ON THE DATE SHOWN. Contact Person: Stacey L.Sutter,5-1526 CC: CAO,Justice Administration ATTESTED ' Auditor/Controller JOHN SWEETEN, CLERK OF THE BOARD OF Sheriff(for distribution) SUPER/VI ORS AND COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR BY . 0 DEPUTY --/ ADDENDUM SDA March 27, 2001 On this date,the Board of Supervisors considered authorizing the Sheriff-Coroner, or designee, to request 800 MHz frequencies on a provision basis from the National Public Safety Planning and Advisory Committee, and directing the Sheriff-Coroner to work with the County Administrator's Office and the Department of Information Technology to identify funding options for installation of a regional, 800 MHz, trunked, public safety communications system, if such a system is feasible. There were no requests from the public to speak on this matter. Following discussion, the Board took the following action: AUTHORIZED the Sheriff-Coroner or designee to request 800 MHz frequencies from the National Public Safety Planning and Advisory Committee (NPSPAC); DIRECTED the Sheriff- Coroner to work with the County Administrator's Office and the Department of Information Technology to identify funding for installation of a regional, 800 MHz, trunked, public safety communications system; DIRECTED that collaboration/coordination with other jurisdictions in the County be explored; and FURTHER DIRECTED that staff review the possibility of fees on new developments for said frequencies as an infrastructure cost. OFFICE OF THE SHERIFF Contra Costa County Administration 651 Pine Street, 7 h Floor, Martinez (925) 335-1500 Date: March 14, 2001 To: John Sweeten, County Administrator From: War en E. heri Subject: Radio ommunications The purpose of this memorandum is to describe the radio system currently in use by the Office of The Sheriff and the immediate operational challenges we face. We believe it is extremely important to move forward right away to address these concerns. Listed below are the main issues that we feel need to be addressed to ensure that the Sheriffs Office, as well as Contra Costa County, has a reliable, efficient and state of the art communication system to carry us through the next 20 years. • Loading • Interoperability • Coverage • Interference • Expandability Channel Loading The Sheriffs Office dispatches for the communities of San Ramon, Danville, Orinda, Lafayette, Moraga, Pittsburg, Oakley, and Rio Vista as well as the unincorporated areas of the County. Normally, communities of this size require one main dispatch channel and one tactical channel each. The Sheriffs Office dispatches for these communities on a total of three channels. Due to the radio spectrum congestion in the Bay Area, it is impossible to acquire additional VHF channels for the system we currently use. The Sheriffs Office requested additional VHF frequencies in 1997 and was denied. Dispatchers are required to keep track of as many as 70 units per channel in busy times. This is more than triple what other dispatch centers are accustomed to. This leads to a situation wherein field units sometimes have great difficulty getting on the air to conduct 1 5 business, causing frustration. Simultaneously, dispatchers are attempting to handle such a load of requests that the situation becomes inefficient, stressful and sometimes less safe than we prefer, to the point of being dangerous at times. This problem of excessive loading of the channels has been identified frequently by the Deputy Sheriffs Association as a safety issue and is a legitimate concern. Interoperability The Sheriffs Office is in the part of the spectrum known as high band VHF. Most cities in the county are in the UHF band and Fire uses low band. These systems are not seamlessly interoperable. Having all agencies on the same part of the spectrum, interoperability problems within the county as well as surrounding counties, would be greatly reduced if not eliminated. Conversely, we would have great difficulty communicating in a large-scale event even remotely comparable to the Loma Prieta earthquake, the Oakland firestorm or the Rodney King riots. Whether man-made or natural disaster, the ability to communicate among responders is paramount to public safety. Sacramento, Alameda and San Francisco Counties, as well as numerous cities, have 800 Mhz systems in place and have informally agreed upon mutually sharing some channels to create a truly regional system. Marin County, is currently implementing a UHF T-Band system and will accomplish intra-county interoperability. Coverage To try to balance the load, the Sheriffs office has assigned the agencies listed above to those three channels by area. Channel 1 (P-1) is assigned to Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda, North Richmond, Crockett, Port Costa, Rodeo, EI Sobrante as well as other unincorporated areas. Channel 2 (P-2) has on the channel the cities of Danville, San Ramon, Blackhawk, Alamo and other unincorporated areas. The cities of Pittsburg, Oakley, Rio Vista (Solano County), Baypoint and other unincorporated areas are all on channel 3 (P-3). Over the years, areas of the County, especially east county, have experienced rapidly accelerated development. The population of Contra Costa County has gained 130,000 residents in the last 10 years which has led to a dramatic increase in calls for service. Interference When the County first acquired the three channels currently being used, there was little or no problem of interference from surrounding areas. The huge need of surrounding agencies for expanding communications has created a great deal of congestion in the radio spectrum. Adequate coverage for the Sheriffs Office might be possible except for the fact that we share our three channels with surrounding Public Safety Agencies. Our receivers pick 2 up these signals, sometimes stronger than our own units. This causes "desense" in vital receivers throughout the county, especially in the high level radios. Desense is, basically, the capturing of our receivers by a signal from another agency preventing our units from accessing the same receiver. Our high level receivers have been detuned to mitigate the effects of this problem. This, in turn, reduces our ability to access the same receiver. Additionally, the FCC is now allowing other users to license only 7.5 Khz (instead of the 15 Khz spacing used for years) from existing licenses causing adjacent channel interference. This is already taking place in some surrounding counties, can be expected here and will only exacerbate the existing interference problem. We are faced with the challenge of continuing to meet this ever-increasing demand with the same three law enforcement channels. The need to develop a system to cope with this problem is of the highest priority. Expandability The FCC has agreed to release spectrum for Public Safety use. This spectrum has several advantages over the previous releases. First, there's a lot of it, 785 voice channels and 180 data channels. Once broadcast analog TV has converted to Digital High Definition, these channels will be handed over to Public Safety and will comprise more spectrum than all existing Public Safety channels combined. Second, it's contiguous with the existing 800 MHz channels and can be added to the system that we're proposing. Mitigation Efforts The Sheriffs Office has utilized mobile data to minimize voice traffic since 1988 and in 1997 obtained a second data channel. We recently spent over $300,000 to upgrade the data system to faster speeds to allow faster access to the 220 Mobile Data Terminals that are presently in use. We have documented many of our units averaging over 200 MDT transactions in the course of an 8 hour shift. The mobile data system is extremely busy and has been instrumental in taking some of the burden off the voice channel but certainly is not enough. In the last 10 days, the system has processed over 250,000 data requests. There are not a lot of options available, but over the course of the past 4 years the Sheriffs Office has explored the possible solutions. Of those options, we paid particular attention to three: High Band Simulcast, High Band Trunking and 800 Megahertz Trunking. 3 High Band Simulcast This is the transmitting of all hilltop radios simultaneously on a given channel. This allows field units the ability to communicate to other field units at a greater distance. This would use our existing channels. Due to the fact that no new channels are available in this part of the radio frequency band, there is no way to mitigate channel loading. In fact, with all units able to hear each other, the net effect would be to make the channels seem even busier than they currently do. There would be no ability to improve our lack of interoperability either. High Band Trunking This system utilizes the efficient dynamic assignment of existing channels. This option would somewhat alleviate loading problems if more High Band channels were available, but they are not. Trunking would only be useful to us if we could obtain additional channels for the system to divert excess radio traffic to. This system will not assist with interoperability either. Current Options In 1989, the Federal Communications Commission, through APCO (Association of Public Safety Communications Officers), allocated 800 MHZ frequencies, based on population, to counties throughout Northern California with the stipulation that construction begin on new systems within one year of licensing. Many counties have built new systems. Contra Costa County, believing that funding could not be found, opted to not exercise their right and allowed most of the original hi-level channels to be re-allotted. We now have a second chance to acquire 800 Mhz channels. These channels can be used as low-level only, as opposed to the original allotment. This, in turn, requires higher infrastructure costs due to the addition of more sites to accomplish the same coverage. Attached is an informational sheet covering subscriber costs for the 800 Mhz equipment which would be needed by the County and some non-County agencies. The Department of Information Technology has hired a consultant, Alan Burton to study the 800 Mhz solution as well as two other options, a simulcast system and some type of hybrid system. This study will be ready by April 1, 2001, with an independant analysis of our solution(s). It is estimated the cost of a complete system would range between twenty-five to thirty-five million dollars, with the cost differing by various solution. To preserve our options it is extremely important to move forward with a Board Order at this time indicating our intent to apply for the frequencies. At the same time we will continue to study our options. If we determine that 800 Mhz is the desirable option the County must commit to funding within 18 months. If, during this 18 month period, we decide not to move forward with the 800 Mhz option we will return these channels to 4 NPSPAC without penalty. This action will assure Contra Costa County can hold the necessary 800 Mhz frequencies, allowing us the time we need to make an informed decision. When we have adequate information, the Office of the Sheriff will return to the Board of Supervisors with a more complete analysis of costs, a description of the initial participants, and a comprehensive development plan. At that time we will work with the County to identify financing sources. Cc: Supervisor Gayle Uilkema Supervisor Mark DeSaulnier Supervisor Donna Gerber Supervisor John Gioia Supervisor Federal Glover l 5 Subscriber Costs All prices based upon Motorola's high-end radios Mobiles Portables Control Stations County Radios Sheriffs Office/Contract Cities 341 484 34 GSD 50 12 1 Public Works 70 10 1 Con Fire 340 330 65 Animal Control 12 9 1 Sub Total 813 845 97 Non-County Radios SRVFD 100 240 15 Rio Vista 7 15 1 Antioch PD 67 130 1 Mora a PD 7 15 1 PittsburgPD 25 48 3 Sub Total 206 448 21 Total Radios 1 10191 12931 118 Costs County Mobiles 813 @ $3469 ea. $2,820,297 County Portables 845 @ $3909 ea. $3,303,105 Non-County Mobiles 206 @ $3469 ea. $714,614 Non-County Portables 448 @ $3909 ea. $1,751,232 County Control Stations 97 @ $3869 ea. $375,293 Non-County Control Stations 21 @ $3869 ea. $81,249 Total $9,045,790