Wednesday, May 19, 1999
County, city fret about losing frequencies
BY DAN KLEPAL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Hamilton County commissioners are expected to approve spending
$6 million today to build a limited 800-megahertz emergency communication system.
Cincinnati may eventually use the same tactic to protect its license for 800-megahertz frequencies.
SYSTEM OVERLOADS
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Emergency communications professionals say the current, 40-year-old county system becomes easily overloaded, does not penetrate certain areas and will not allow for different agencies to talk with one another during emergencies.
Issue 3 on the May ballot would have paid for communications towers, radios, a computer brain and software for the countywide system. The county's smaller investment will give one radio to about 44 fire and ambulance agencies and preserve the frequencies for those radios to operate on. |
With the defeat in May of a four-year special tax that would have raised $63.7 million to buy a new countywide communications system, the city is staring at a March 21, 2000, deadline to either begin building a system or lose its communications license.
The county committed to spending the $6 million to preserve its 20 frequencies in January, when it adopted the 1999 budget.
A similar investment by the city would keep its license from expiring, said Ron Harbaugh, director of police communications for the city. If that happens, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could sell the frequencies to another community building a system, he said.
Mr. Harbaugh, who has acted as a liaison between the city and FCC on the licensing issue, said a decision on what the city will do next should come in the next couple of weeks.
“If we could report (to the FCC) that we've made the same type of investment as the county and started using the frequencies, then we'd probably be able to keep our license,” Mr. Harbaugh said.
“But it's like anything — if you can't perform, you're out. That's what we're dealing with.”
Meanwhile, Cincinnati Councilman Todd Portune would like to revisit an idea he had two years ago — the last time voters said no to a special tax for emergency communications.
Mr. Portune has asked Kent Ryan, the city's safety director, to update a 1997 report that said the city's communications system could be upgraded for about $1 million to cure some of the current ills.
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