Volunteer fire depts. get grant for radios

Interoperability among Garland County's nine volunteer fire departments will be improved upon receipt of the Assistance to Firefighters Grant they were awarded earlier this month, officials said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded a $560,546 grant for radios that can access the Arkansas Wireless Information Network, the state-run communication system used by over 900 local, state and federal agencies. The 10-percent regional match provided by the departments gives them $616,000 to purchase radios.

Garland County Department of Emergency Management Director Bo Robertson said the departments will each be assigned one of the 30 talk paths, or channels, the state will allot the county when it becomes a full-time AWIN user. It's currently a part-time user with access to AWIN's statewide interoperability channel.

Robertson said the radios will improve interoperability on mutual-aid operations, allowing for inter-department communication without a dispatcher when the departments respond to fires in each other's service areas.

"It will make it easier from a standpoint of programming the radios, but also if you're going to help another department you don't have to ask the dispatcher what channel they're on," he said. "You'll already know what channel that fire department is on."

Autumn Carlisle, 70 West Fire Department chief, who applied for the grant, agreed.

"It will make it better when we have something we're all trying to work on," she said. "When we're working a large incident, it will allow for better communication."

Carlisle said it's unclear how many radios can be purchased with the grant proceeds, which have to be spent by the end of next August. Robertson said it will provide radios for all seated positions in fire trucks, portable radios for the departments' command-and-control personnel and base station radios.

He said the grant proceeds reduce the number of radios the county has to purchase as part of its more than $5 million contract with Motorola. It budgeted for over 400 base station, vehicle-mounted and portable radios for county public safety and service personnel and volunteer fire departments prior to the grant award.

In addition to providing radios, Motorola will install the suite of repeaters AWIN needs to support the added traffic the county will bring to the network. The state will maintain the infrastructure once it's in place.

The city is planning to roll out its own $6 million communication upgrade. City Manager David Frasher told the Hot Springs Board of Directors earlier this month that the city's consultant has completed its report on the three bids submitted by Harris Corp. and Motorola.

Both companies submitted bids for self-contained, proprietary systems the city would own and maintain. Motorola also submitted an alternate bid for a system that would make the city a full-time AWIN user.

Frasher said a committee comprising Fire Chief Ed Davis, Police Chief Jason Stachey, Assistant Police Chief Chris Chapmond, Fire Marshal Tom Braughton, Solid Waste Director Randy Atkinson, Utilities Director Monty Ledbetter and Fleet Service Director Greg Speas is reviewing the report and will make a recommendation to him in the next month.

The city plans to use proceeds from the 2.6 mills the city board levied for the 2016 tax year. It's expected to continue the levy when millage rates for the current tax year are set in November. The millage is projected to generate $3.2 million over the two years.

The city also appropriated $1.59 million for the project from its solid waste, water and wastewater funds.

The county's communication upgrade is being funded from excess collections of the five-eighths cent sales tax voters passed in 2011 to build the $42 million Garland County Detention Center that opened in June 2015.

Receipts in excess of 2016 budget projections for the half-cent sales tax the county levies for its General Fund are paying for the $700,000 project that's converting the old detention center into a 911 call center that will dispatch sheriff's office personnel and volunteer fire departments.

Robertson said the call center's five consoles are due to arrive later this month. The 5,000-square-foot facility is being built with the capacity to host five more consoles in the future.

"We're looking for October for all of the consoles to be set," Robertson said. "Then it will really start looking like a dispatch center."

Money was budgeted to hire five additional dispatchers, giving the county a total of 14 to staff the call center around the clock.

Local on 09/15/2017

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