08 27 2009 Board Meeting
W Memo To From Subject Date A Public 27, 2009 Wilmingt MEMBE Sterling P Warren L Jan Kava Jerry Bre Sharon B Michael Donna Sm Cynthia D Frank Bl William Y Guests Wayne P Jeremy G Jason
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Chairman Powell called the meeting to order at 10:11 a.m. He asked if everyone had a chance to review the minutes from July 23, 2009 and if there were any questions, comments, changes
or corrections. No one had any. Chairman Powell asked if there was a motion to approve the minutes. Frank Blackley made a motion and Cynthia Deacon seconded. All agreed. Motion passed.
OLD BUSINESS: 800 MHz Rebanding Update Chairman Powell asked Warren to update everyone on the rebanding. Warren turned it over to Jason who stated that they have all the code plugs submitted
and are awaiting approval. They will start on the 9-1-1 Center Monday. Wrightsville Beach PD or FD will be the 4th of September. Chairman Powell asked if it was possible to get them
both done at the same time and Jason said that Bob Hamlin will set up with a firm time. Warren passed out an updated schedule for all present. (Later it was amended to email copy of
an updated schedule). Fire Dispatch Chairman Powell stated that Dorian wasn’t present to update everyone on this but there was another meeting to be held soon. Frank Blackley said that
there were a couple of times patching wasn’t working between City Fire and Wrightsville Beach. Chairman Powell stated that it has been done for Wrightsville Beach but to wants to stress
the importance of patching so that the problems don’t persist. Warren Lee advised if you arrive on scene and it is not being done; request it then before leaving the scene. NEW BUSINESS
No new business at this time OTHER ITEMS AND REPORTS Public Safety Communications Frank Blackley asked about the use of the TAC channels when we go into “storm mode” so that everyone
is not clogging the radios. Charlotte’s Storm Policy has all radio traffic take place on the TAC channels with the battalion chiefs to reduce radio traffic and BC will relay it to staff.
Is there a similar policy set up for New Hanover County because it may help with some of the issues from Friday? Warren informed everyone that on Friday there was a loss of all twelve
9-1-1 trunk lines. AT&T doesn’t have an answer as to why we lost them and they will not commit to saying that it was lightening induced. They were not even aware of it as there was not
an alarm or notification of our loss. NIM cards were reconfigured with four alarms which are supposed to activate the signals but none did anything. There were two AT&T people in the
DATA room and they were not even aware. There are five fuses on each of the cards and two blew so it a while to figure out
what was wrong then get it back up. In the meantime, we scrambled to get the lines routed to Brunswick County. The AT&T service people did not know what the RTU number was for Brunswick
County to re-route our calls. In the meantime, when the system fails it is supposed to re-route over to the non-emergency numbers in the center which happened right away. Shortly after
it failed and dialing 9-1-1 rang busy, this continued until AT&T re-routed to Brunswick County. Integrated fire did pile up while this was going. We are still working with AT&T to find
out what happened and if this will happen with the VIPER system. Their response is that the work being done should minimize this happening. That was not the answer Warren was looking
for; he wanted to hear that we were not going to have this happen with this work being done. He will stay on this to find out how it happened and what to do to prevent it from reoccurring.
Warren feels that it is not anything in our electrical making a difference but that it is something in the 9-1-1 lines not done properly to begin with and they are not owning up to the
situation. The Center now has their second group of new employees, we have six new full time and four temporaries within the last two weeks. Five of the full time employees have been
released to the squads; they are not totally released but some have telecommunicator experience. We are optimistic about getting back up and running but it is difficult to get and retain
good and qualified people. The stats for each agency has been emailed with July’s meeting notes. If you haven’t received them, let us know. We continue to get a large number of requests
for recordings. Debora is helping with those as Susan is tied up with training the new telecommunicators. Debora is at CBS right now doing a 30 minute television interview with one of
the telecommunicators about 9-1-1. It will air Sunday at 11 a.m. with Don Ansell. VIPER upgrade had a couple of hiccups between the design engineer and the electrician. It was originally
scheduled to be completed last night at 2 but due the delay we missed the window of opportunity and now it will be the first week of November and the electrician’s completion date is
September 7th. New conduit on each console was one of several things that have to be done for this project to meet AT&T’s compliance standards. Frank Blackley asked if anything had changed
with the funds collected for 9-1-1 and distributed. Warren said there was a bill introduced to broaden what is paid for with those funds but has not passed as yet. IT Chairman Powell
asked if Jan had any updates for IT. Jan informed everyone that they are spending a lot of time working to prevent CAD lock ups. There have been improvements but they are not where they
want to be yet. Debora put limitations on the queries. The disc array is not large enough for a broad query. If you need a broader range, you will have to let them know.
New hardware may fix the problem but there was not money budgeted for this so that will have to be done in the next budget cycle. Hopefully this will fix the problem but in the meantime,
we will keep working with OSSI and try to get to the bottom of this but it has improved and minimized the lock ups. Jan has run several protocols and done upgrades. This will continue
to be monitored. Chairman Powell asked if anyone had anything else. Chairman Powell adjourned the meeting at 10:38 a.m.