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Oct 25 2018 Board Meeting /  Department Of Emergency Management and 911 Communications 230 Government Center Drive, Suite 115 Wilmington, North Carolina 28403 Telephone (910) 798-6920 Fax (910) 798-6925 sstill@nhcgov.com  Steven Still Director    Memorandum To: Public Safety Communications Center Policy Board Members  From: Steven Still, Director  Subject: October 25, 2018  Date: November 19, 2018   A Public Safety Communications Center Policy Board meeting was held on Thursday October 25, 2018 at 9:30 AM in Conference Room 116, 230 Government Center Drive, Wilmington, North Carolina. MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBERS ABSENT: Frank Blackley Tim Burgess Steven Still Tim Corbett Matt Davis Cynthia Deacon Jerry Brewer Joe Miljenovic Glen Rogers Carla Bradshaw Gia Long Guests Zac Whicker, NHC EM & 911 Chris Hewett, NHC EM & 911 Meredith Mulford, City of Wilm Fire Missy Ezzell, UNC-W Robert Hiltebeitel, City of Wilm IT Mike Gomes, City of Wilm IT The meeting was called to order at 9:33 am. Chairman Blackley asked if everyone had a chance to review the minutes from the August 23, 2018 meeting and if there were any questions, comments, changes or corrections. Chairman Blackley asked if there was a motion to approve the minutes; Glen Rogers made a motion and Matt Davis seconded. All in favor; none opposed. Motion passed. OLD BUSINESS: Fire House Chairman Blackley asked if there was an update on the interface with Firehouse software and CAD; Chris Hewett stated that Superion is working on something new but did not give him specifics. The information he was provided is the SMS or querry server tries to request information from the City’s Firehouse, it is rejecting it as an incorrect user name or password which Superion is saying users are using the correct user name or password it is just giving the error message and Superion is trying to fix the software issues. Steven Still talked about the Freedom Dispatch; it is part of an update. Some agencies are still able to utilize portions that all users used to have to add themselves to an event from a tablet or phone. This feature was removed during updates so units that still have it have not updated their unit. Matt Davis asked what version did we have; Gia Long stated she believed it was 18.0. Chairman Blackley asked her to verify and let the board know. Chairman Blackley asked if there was any other old business; no one had any. NEW BUSINESS Chairman Blackley informed everyone about National Telecommunicator’s week; Chairman Blackley would like the Board to ensure there is a resolution before the County Commissioners to recognize the week of April 7 through April 13, 2019 as Telecommunicator Week. He will be there on behalf of the PSCC Board and everyone is welcome to come support the 911 Center for that proclamation. Chairman Blackley asked if there were any other items for new business; no one had any. OTHER ITEMS AND REPORTS IT Chairman Blackley asked for an update for IT. Gia doesn’t have anything new to report right now. The last time the Board met; IT was doing an upgrade of Superion; now called Central Square. It has been completed along with Aqua and ProQA. Chairman Blackley asked if there was anything else coming soon. Gia says not as of yet. Matt Davis got an email in the last couple of days that Priority Dispatch was upgrading their fire though it seems to be several months out. Chris Hewett says it just became available; he is not sure of the plan or implementation. There seem to be significant changes. If anyone wants them Chris is willing to send the notes from them out to anyone interested. Chairman Blackley asked if there were any questions for IT. No one had any. Carla Bradshaw mentioned that the City of Wilmington will be doing an upgrade in a couple of weeks to RMS 18.3 and mobile units. Hopefully, a couple of weeks later we will update to NIBRS; the National Incident Based Recording System. If all goes as it should, the updates will be done around the first of December 2018. 9-1-1 Center Chairman Blackley asked if Steven could update everyone on 911. The recent storm has the County reviewing the actions through the storm. The County Manager and County Commissioners have created a Recovery Office; they will do a thorough review of actions of all participants, vendors and components during and after the storm. The new team will be visiting and talking with everyone most likely after the elections. Steven stated during the storm; it was carefully decided between voluntary evacuation or mandatory; during a mandatory evacuation your vendors also go so there would have to be support if there are emergency personnel working. The emergency support staff were able to bring their families. There were three full shifts available during the storm for the EOC as well as the 911 Center staff. There was an emergency plan to send one squad to Raleigh. The staff sent to Raleigh were if there was a loss of the communications center. There was a generator issue on the night of September 15, 2018. This generator issue caused us to vacate both the EOC and the 911 Center. Anything attached to the UPS (uninterrupted power source) failed. Everything went dark in both the EOC and the 911 Center. The backup staff sent to Raleigh was needed as the EOC and 911 Center was down to man the phones. The new EOC was set up within four hours of the EOC going out. Our current plan is to evaluate the issues and what went wrong during the storm. The 911 Center will be moved temporarily to the backup center to allow an electrical engineer to go through the EOC system as well as 911 and to make recommendations. This will be temporary and will last approximately about one to two years. This is our master site so every piece of equipment will have to find a temporary home during the evaluation and the possible gutting of the EOC and 911. If this is the case, it may be longer than two years. Steven’s goal is to utilize all available funding sources to rebuild both for the capacity it needs. The current EOC and 911 are rated for a Category 3. Even with a Category 4 or 5, there will be some staff here. This facility will need to be retrofitted to remove or reduce vulnerabilities. The microwave project is still going forward. Motorola is here now evaluating the communications issues on the south side. With the move to the backup that will be a 911 issue as well since the backup center is located on that end of the county. Motorola did find some items that would cause the south side to have communications issues. One of the issues was the Palmetto System. The Palmetto System signal is stronger than ours. They may be able to do a configuration on the system. Some of the locations that are in a shadow that a new tower may alleviate. Station alerting has fallen down the list of items with everything else as there is no money for station alerting right now; the current priority is a stable environment. This may be considered if there is a rebuild. Matt Davis asked if there was a plan in place for a backup; there are generator issues at Federal Point. Steven stated the backup right now is if there is a drop, Brunswick is our backup. Matt Davis said it might be advantageous to test it to see if there any unforeseen vulnerabilities. Steven said there was a transformer damaged on the south side that has to be replaced. There is supposed to be an outage for about an hour. Steven also informed the Board that New Hanover County has a new Property Management Director and her name is Sara Warmuth. She seems to be very progressive. She will work with a contractor with a stand by generator in case the generator fails when they do the transformer replacement. This is scheduled for today. Jerry Brewer asked if there has been any talk of building a backup center. Steven stated that this is cost prohibitive; a regional center is where the NC 911 Board is leaning which would be a management issue. Steven told the Board that we have hired nine more telecommunicators this week. They will have to train in our conference room since the backup center is going to be utilized. Glen Rogers asked if there would be more supervisors with the new hires. Steven said that the supervisors have been rearranged. The Quality Assurance Unit is now three people; one person for each protocol. This is hopefully going to reduce the turnover. We were in the mid 50’s for turnover and now it is about 20 percent. Glen stated that when a new hire takes over the console, the quality seems to drop. Steven asked if anyone has issues, to please forward them to Matt Langley or Karen Benton. If it is really an issue, please call the supervisor on duty. We have the trainees sitting with a CTO for each console including call taking. If there are errors outside of the training, the QA team usually find them during review. Steven will also forward a Google form for radio issues. Please complete this if there are any issues to be documented. Chairman Blackley asked if there were any questions for Steven. No one had any Chairman Blackley introduced Meredith Mulford, she will be working with City of Wilmington Fire for Process Improvement. Mike Gomes wanted to introduce Robert Hiltebeitel; Rob is a new analyst for City of Wilmington IT. Chairman Blackley asked if there were any other items to be discussed. No one had any. Meeting adjourned at 10:39 a.m.