RADIO SYSTEM SUB-COMMITTEE Wednesday, October 24, 2012 Jerry Morrow, Chairman Chairman Morrow called this Radio System sub-committee meeting to order at 10:00 a.m. with the following Supervisors in attendance: Randy Douglas, Sue Montgomery-Corey, Mike Marnell and Jerry Morrow. (Randy Preston and Tom Scozzafava had been previously excused). Department Heads present were: Don Jaquish, Dan Manning, Dan Palmer and Deb Palmer. Also present were: Mike Blaise-Emergency Services; Aaron Kellett-ORDA; Travis LePage- Federal Engineering; Jacqui Murray-Murray Law Firm and Dave Whitford-AES Northeast. MORROW: I am going to call this Radio System sub-committee to order. I would ask that everyone come up and take a seat at a microphone because this is going to be taped so speak into your microphones please. Don’t be shy, come right up and grab a microphone. Thank you all for coming, I really appreciate it and I thank Randy for asking for this meeting. We are going to start off with introductions so everybody knows who is here. I am Jerry Morrow, Supervisor of the Town of Chesterfield and Chair of this sub-committee. Dave Whitford-AES Northeast Aaron Kellet-General Manager, Whiteface Mountain Jacqui Phillips-Murray, attorney that was hired by the County to do site acquisition and permitting Mike Blaise, Deputy Director, Emergency Services Mike Mascarenas, Essex County Planning Sue Montgomery-Corey, Town of Minerva Randy Douglas, Town of Jay Supervisor and Chair of the Board Dan Manning, Essex County Attorney Dan Palmer, Essex County Manager Mike Marnell, Supervisor, Town of Schroon Lake Don Jaquish, Director of Emergency Services, Essex County Travis LePage, Federal Engineering MORROW: Thank you very much. I know we have a video, a slide show today but I am going to turn it right over to our expert in charge, Don Jaquish to start out. JAQUISH: I would like to start off by asking Travis to go through a presentation on the project to give you all a overall comprehensive picture of what has been going on. LEPAGE: Thanks Don and good morning everyone. It is a beautiful day to talk about the radio project, right? Welcome to the radio sub-committee meeting today. What we are going to do this morning, I was actually looking back at my files and the last time that we presented for the board was December 13, 2010 so a lot has changed since then as I am sure you have heard and have been discussing over the time here. Some of the things that you probably are thinking about in your minds is what are we really doing with this project? What are the benefits? Maybe secondly, why is this project so complicated or does it appear to be that Page 2 Radio System Sub-Committee 10/24/2012 complicated - the truth is, it is. We will go through it and highlight some of those areas and Jacqui from the Murray Law Firm and Dave of AES Northeast will also assist me in discussing site specific challenges, constraints and so forth. Another question you might ask is - why is the cost what it is? We will take a look at some of those things. Maybe lastly you are thinking how is this project going to move forward? How is it going to get done within the foreseeable future in some type of a reasonable budget? So it is my hope this morning that as we walk through this interactive presentation that we get issues out on the table, have a two way discussion/dialogue on what people are thinking and what questions you have so that we can answer those here today. Just a general overview of the system and who is involved. The players essentially for the vendor side as you are probably aware is Motorola Solutions for the land/mobile radio portion of the project and Alcatel Lucent for the microwave radio network. Wells Communications is providing paging equipment, some installation services. Federal Engineering, who I am with, is providing engineering and program management services. I am going to be pausing as we walk through this presentation just so we have time to talk about everything. You can see here now essentially the core of the network with the various spur sites. Now the network when it was built comprises 17 sites plus a reflector or passive repeater which will be located at Saddle Hill and you will see that there is no power or anything, hence the term passive. It reflects the microwave radio signal from the Lewis PSB to the other site. So we will take a look at that. The core network here, you will have data rates capacity of 150 megabytes per second over the core network and between 24 and 50 megabytes per second on the spur links. If you are not familiar with maybe what the spurs are, there are seven spur sites and those are the sites that you can see that have only one channel if you will or link into the network and those include Angier Hill, Black Mountain and some others which we will take a look at. So right off the bat as far as what are the benefits of this project? You will see what we are doing but what are the benefits? Well first off the County is replacing an aging microwave radio network which a similar story is I am working with a County not too far from here. They have a microwave network that was put in in the late 60's to early 70's and they spend thousands and thousands of dollars a month just maintaining it, they are putting band-aid on it and they are just now in the process of doing what you are doing to upgrade. So you are improving and replacing outmoded technology’s and aging infrastructure. Obviously you are improving coverage. It seems unfortunately that this area is becoming increasingly prone to natural and man-made disasters; I know you have had quite a few over the last few years so ever more the time to improve communications for public safety and public service agency’s who need to protect the community. Another benefit is, is it economy of scale? You are sharing the costs with the State Police, NYS Electric and Gas and other radio partners in the region and surrounding counties. When it is completed will be one of the first accomplishments for the Adirondack Regional Interoperable Communications Consortium (known as ARICC) which of course includes Essex County and seven surrounding counties being - Clinton, Franklin, Hamilton, Montgomery, Saratoga, Warren and Washington Counties. So another benefit is you are sharing the costs. You are building really a super highway. Lots of capacity on this network. Future uses could be, you could actually transport internet data over the network for the school districts and other County and local municipalities - there is that band width there so you are building something for now and for the future. Another benefit of building this network now and with the partners that you have is that you are eligible and have already received quite a bit of grant funding for this project which is very, very important because there are many counties in the State who are in similar position who Page 3 Radio System Sub-Committee 10/24/2012 unfortunately haven’t teamed up with a consortium and obviously one of the requirements is that it be a multi-jurisdictional, multi-regional project in order to receive those grant funds. So those are just some of the benefits up-front. Now what we will do is take a walk through site by site and look at what is going on at the sites. Again the equipment that is going to be installed and the players that are going to be doing it. We will start at the Lewis Public Safety building which everyone is familiar with and at the Lewis Public Safety building what will be installed for the microwave radio network is a 6' dish which you can see depicted there, it will actually be a wall mount on the roof and that will be pointed toward Saddle Hill, the Saddle Hill passive reflector which is approximately a northeasterly direction. Other improvements at the Public Safety building to accommodate the microwave antenna on the roof will be a cable tray and an ice bridge and inside will be upgrades to the electrical equipment to support the Motorola land/mobile radio paging equipment. So that is essentially not major work I would say compared to some of the other sites but pretty key because another penetration is going to have to be made in the roof which requires a dog house type of interface for the cables and so forth. JAQUISH: I would just like to say that the original installation was a roof mount however the roof is not structurally capable of holding the weight of that dish with the sandbagged supports - is that correct Dave? That is why we went to the wall mount. WHITFORD: I think that somebody else worked on that. LEPAGE: Yeah, as a matter of fact Don you are correct and thanks for bringing up that point. What would have had to be done if the roof top, if the microwave antenna was mounted on say a ballast type of mount on the roof top, probably and I think the estimate was around $150,000 to $200,000 in structural improvements would have to be done to the Lewis Public Safety building to support that dish so it took a while and it wasn’t an easy process because one change in a system like this with multiple vendors, it just has a rippling affect with designs and FCC licensing and coordination.