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Dec 6 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: December 6, 2018  Date: January 23, 2019   A Public Safety Communications Center Policy Board meeting was held on Thursday December 6, 2018 at 10:00 AM in the EOC, 230 Government Center Drive, Wilmington, North Carolina. MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBERS ABSENT: Glen Rogers Tim Burgess Steven Still Frank Blackley Matt Davis Jerry Brewer John Musacchio Joe Miljenovic Tim Corbett Cynthia Deacon Cindy Hewett Jason Bishop Chris Graham Guests Debora Cottle, NHC EM & 911 Zac Whicker, NHC EM & 911 Matt Langley, NHC EM & 911 Chris Hewett, NHC EM & 911 Gia Long, NHC IT Tomashia Robinson, NHC IT Kate Murphy, NHC Communications Jennifer Smith, NHC Fire Meredith Mulford, WFD Mike Gomes, City of Wilm IT Missy Ezzell, UNC-W The meeting was called to order at 10:00am. Acting Chairman Rogers asked if everyone had a chance to review the minutes from the October 25, 2018 meeting with the correction of (Federal) Point not containing an “E”; page 4 paragraph 4 and if there were any other questions, comments, changes or corrections. Acting Chair Rogers asked if there was a motion to approve the minutes with the above correction; Matt Davis made a motion and Steven Still seconded. All in favor; none opposed. Motion passed. OLD BUSINESS: Firehouse Acting Chair Rogers asked about Firehouse; there seems to be continual work on this and asked if anyone had information on this. Chris Graham stated that there was work done this week on Freedom and MCT’s but it did not work. Chris Hewett said that they were working with Central Square there are issues with the development. The repairs they are trying to fix the issues are not successful. Freedom is working fine, but not communicating with Firehouse properly on the city side. Meredith Mulford stated there are problems of getting Central Square to fix issues. She stated she started with City Fire in January and the fire tab just got fixed three weeks ago. Steven Still recommended everyone getting together and put together items they have failed to provide that were part of features purchased that they either didn’t deliver or removed from the applications. There are substantial amounts paid to their company to have such a poor response to fixing issues. Cindy Hewett stated that Central Square was going to be here January 17, 2019. Though Cindy is not sure if these are the same folks that would be able to handle questions about these issues. They will be on-site to discuss the future of their product and the recent changes; not just the name change but the product changes as well. Cindy stated that someone would contact Central Square so they would be informed that there were going to be people present at the meeting to question these issues beforehand. Matt Davis brought up the fact that there were features sold to us as a part of Freedom App and they have removed those same features that were a selling point to our purchase of this product. They have installed a patch to replace the feature they removed. They shouldn’t sell a product with X number of features and then down the road remove or deactivate half of the features that were one of the reasons for purchasing the product. This should also be discussed when meeting with Central Square and most likely would get more of a response from management or department heads that can attend. If you could also include why auto-enroute and auto arrive were removed when talking to Central Square about the features removed. Steven understands the frustration of the features that were sold with the application and then taken away and completely agrees with department heads or this board Chairman attending the meeting with Central Square to show the expectations of the agencies they have sold their application. Cindy asked Gia Long if she verified the version we were on for Freedom App; Gia stated that she did not verify, did Tomashia know which version. Tomashia stated it was 18.0. Acting Chair Rogers asked if there was any other old business; no one had any. NEW BUSINESS Acting Chair Rogers asked if Steven could update everyone on 911. The post storm tower climb and communications systems inspection was just completed on all four tower sites. There were items found on Flemington and the Government Center tower that were storm related. These items do not affect service but is up to us to repair. Seabreeze tower had substantial damage. The tower climbs and repairs are a huge process to get accomplished. Two things found on Seabreeze severely affect communications on the south side. One is a break of a coax and it was not a clean break. This is giving a bad connection; it was bandaged and is ok for now though there are no guarantees. There was another break that allowed water into the lines and affects communications. Lines and antenna are tentatively scheduled for replacement for the week of January 28th. If there is a substantial storm between now and January 28th, there will be no transmit. We are hoping that this does not happen and Motorola stated they have it buttoned up as well as they can but again there are no guarantees this will not happen. Steven stated Motorola is sure this would improve the communications on the south side of the county. This will be monitored for some time after the repairs are completed to monitor signal strength. We are still pursuing another site for a new tower but that is easier said than done. There is still interference from the Palmetto System around the Fort Fisher area. Motorola also maintains their system in South Carolina so they will be meeting with them about these issues. Steven said that this facility at Government Center had all of the systems in the 911 Center moved to IT which has a more power stable environment. Another item is an AT&T piece of equipment, a phone circuit between this site and the backup. The circuit was installed by AT&T but they installed it in the wrong location; we are now trying to get them to move it from here to the more power stable area in IT. It shouldn’t take them too long to relocate it. The next step is a Motorola server; we are waiting to be shipped. When it is installed and up and running we will be able to move and install the Motorola consoles. Once all of the 911 Center staff is moved to the backup center they will be able to get an electrical engineer in to evaluate how extensive the repairs needed. There was a rehab needed in the 911 Center and this gives us the opportunity to remove all the old stuff that is worn. This will take time between bidding and procurement. Minimally, the 911 Center will be relocated for about a year at Federal Point. Steven stated that there was miscommunication about shutting down station alerting; it was not disclosed to other agencies that it was being temporarily taken down. Going forward, Steven will make a better effort of notifying and getting a consensus before you lose a system you rely on. This pertains to planned events, any issues that are unplanned we are all having the same issues and there is no pre-planning for outages. Acting Chair Rogers asked if all staff will be down at Federal Point. Steven said yes, all the telecommunicators will be located at the backup center. We are unsure on the duration that staff will be at Federal Point. Acting Chair Rogers asked if there could be a meeting scheduled for the Board to meet after the antenna repair and replacement before the February meeting. The closest date for a meeting after January 28th would be January 31, 2019. Steven wanted to introduce Kate Murphy. She is a shared position with Disaster Recovery and has a PIO role with Emergency Management. She is working with staff at this location and the Northeast Library. John Musacchio wanted to introduce April McKeithan. She is taking over as the administrative Lieutenant. She will be replacing me on this board. She has been working with the City of Wilmington in the Fleet Dept. Acting Chair Rogers asked if there were any items for new business; no one had any. OTHER ITEMS AND REPORTS 9-1-1 Center Acting Chair Rogers asked if Steven had any items to add as updates on 911. Steven asked if Matt Langley would update the board. He stated that the 9 new hires in his academy and they were going through EMD, EFD and EPD this week and next. They will be assigned to the squads on December 13th. There were four new hires with previous experience and the other 5 had none. Acting Chair Rogers asked if there were any questions for Steven. No one had any. IT Acting Chair Rogers asked for an update for IT. Cindy Hewett talked about Neverfail; in place and staff are working on it for the last several weeks. Things are going pretty well and much better than it was, staff are working with the vendor to improve it. If we can’t get through the hiccup we are experiencing and working with the vendor, worst case scenario is there may be a 30 minute down time. Hopefully issues will be wrapped up and there will be no issues by the next meeting. Cindy said they are also working on improving some of the security posture in the county. IT has completed a Hippa security assessment in several departments. There are things we need to work on according to the assessment. There was also a PCI assessment; the Procurement Card Industry assessment. This assessment also produced areas that needed to be worked on. The next fiscal year will bring a Hippa privacy assessment. More will information will come after July 1, 2019. Most of the assessments recommend increasing minimum password requirements and password resets more frequently. Another project was a building safety automation, going through all buildings and security and access. This includes anything that would improve building safety. Right now they are starting with the Courts, Fire Stations, and the library. If funding allows, Parks will be included. If the funding does not allow it will carry over to next year. After that, building safety will be addressed at the remainder of the buildings not already worked on. Cindy stated they were also improving wireless access points. They will have installed close to 50 this fiscal year at various locations. When installing security cameras, some work off of wireless so this had to be improved and increased the locations for the cameras to work optimally. The IT staff is also working to improve Informacast. This is the mobile communication and was being expanded after the active shooter issues found earlier this year. Acting Chair Rogers asked if there were any questions for IT. No one had any. Acting Chair Rogers asked if there were any other questions or comments. No one had any. Meeting adjourned at 11:03 a.m.