Loading...
October 24 2002 Board Meeting A regular scheduled meeting of the Public Safety Communications Center Policy Board was held on Thursday, October 24, 2002, in Room 501 of the County Administration Building, 320 Chestnut Street, Wilmington, North Carolina. MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBERS ABSENT: Chairman Frank Blackley Dennis Cooper Andy Atkinson Brian Roberts Steve Smith Donnie Hall Everett Ward Dan Summers Ed Woodard Lt. Ed Pigford Bill Clontz Bill Whisnant Lt. Lise Ruefle GUESTS: Kimberly Carder, New Hanover County Manager’s Office Jan Kavanaugh, New Hanover County Information Technology Department Deepak Gupte, Telvation, LLC Jim Walters, Telvation, LLC Chairman Blackley called the meeting to order at 9:10 a.m. Andy Atkinson introduced Kimberly Carder, Administrative Support Specialist, County Manager’s Office. Committee members introduced themselves to her. The summary of the September 26, 2002 meeting was reviewed and approved. Andy Atkinson made a motion to approve the minutes as written and Ed Pigford seconded the motion. OLD BUSINESS:  The City of Wilmington is advertising for a GIS person to handle the addressing issues.  The position should be filled in the next month.  The City of Wilmington received their utility franchise funding from the State.  A portion of the money will be used to help fund the new position. 2 MDT Update: Ed Pigford reported on the Mobile Data Terminal (MDT) meeting.  He was unable to attend but talked briefly with Ed Gibson about the switch changes that were made on the State side.  There were several things on the tower switches that were not properly configured.  The tower switches were reconfigured along with the switches in Bolivia, and Sunset and Topsail Beaches.  The message switches at the tower account for approximately 65 to 70 percent of the problem.  The message switches were not releasing the MDT when it got out of range.  The new parameter settings are working approximately 50 percent better than the old settings due to the configuration changes on the switches.  The State is still testing the new software that it has produced to work on the system.  The new software will increase the selectivity of the New Hanover County channels.  Chairman Blackley stated that there have not been any significant changes in the City of Wilmington Fire Departments’ MDT’s.  Ed Pigford stated that the new settings on his MDT have improved the bad zone especially on Market Street between Martin Luther King Parkway and the city limits. Carolina Beach: Dan Summers reported on the Carolina Beach issue.  Carolina Beach is in the process of ordering their mobile and portable equipment.  Delivery date should be this week.  An organization template for Carolina Beach Police, Fire, Parks, Public Works, and Engineering has been received.  The template for Carolina Beach is part of the reprogramming effort.  Carolina Beach will be closer to having a new master template then the other agencies because it will be date driven.  If the reprogramming is not done as an entire package, when spot reprogramming is done it is going to create problems.  More time is needed to assure that the check and balances of the reprogramming are continued and correct.  All reprogramming needs to be completed by January 1, 2003. New Equipment:  The new equipment has not arrived for Carolina and Kure Beaches.  Once the unit arrives for the inbound/inland down range repeater it will be installed at Kure Beach.  When the unit arrives it will be tested at several beach sites in Carolina Beach. 3  An immediate evaluation will be done to indicate whether or not the unit is capable of doing what it is suppose to do.  The unit installation at Kure Beach should take approximately one hour with enough time to test and evaluate its progress.  If the unit can handle the public safety and regular traffic the way it is suppose to, then several units will be ordered and utilized up and down the beach strand to improve the inbound coverage.  Carolina Beach is using some infrastructure funds to help fund the project.  Carolina Beach needs to purchase an inbound repeater instead of several trunk repeaters.  If the unit does not function in a stationary environment, it is designed to be a mobile unit and can be used in a fire truck or police car.  Carolina Beach has designated a portion of the water tower space to house the unit and space is also available in the New Hanover County tower just south of Monkey Junction.  The units are designed to handle only one talk channel they cannot be changed.  One unit will be needed for law enforcement and a tact channel will have to be installed for fire and EMS.  There are some fringe coverage issues in the Porters Neck, Figure Eight Island and Castle Hayne areas.  If those areas are utilized than the antennas at Flemington will have to be compensated for and one of the units may have to be installed in the Porter Neck area.  The unit would be shared by law enforcement, fire, and EMS to provide coverage in that area.  The units are approximately $10,000 or $11,000 apiece.  This is a substantial savings compared to Simulcast.  The manufacturer has indicated that the talk channels can be selected remotely.  One unit will be assigned to law enforcement on their primary dispatch channel at all times.  A tact channel will be used for fire and EMS. It may be selectable via the 911 Center, but it can only handle one talk channel at a time.  Not enough information has been compiled to indicate how easily the repeater can change talk channels.  The units do not qualify for surcharge funding because they are radio related and no telephones are being utilized. Surcharge Funds and State Legislature: A question was asked why is the County not going to the legislature regarding the surcharge funding? Bill Clontz explained the situation.  There are two issues that surround that idea.  One issue was that a study commission was suppose to be created, but it is unknown at this time whether or not it was created.  The second issue was that Allen O’Neal was invited to join the governing board that regulates the funding. These funds are totally different from the other 4 funding. The State is trying to pull all the funds together under one governing umbrella. Allen did not have the time to commit to another board. It was suggested that Andy Atkinson be appointed instead.  Not much progress has been made on either issue.  If there were local representation on the governing board it would be an automatic in into the legislation channel. It is in our best interest to have that seat.  A letter was written several months ago suggesting that if local governments had a voice on the governing board they would be better represented at the County level. Each county would have a representative and they could better address the issues at hand. The letter was supposed to arrive before the legislation committee was formed. The committee consists of legislators’ not local government representatives.  When the regulation legislation was first set up the State wanted to get 911 services to the citizens so that every county could afford to have some type of service that would work.  At that point, the integrated situation was that they were getting ANI/ALI and some of that information.  Now they have added onto it where it is not only driving the ANI/ALI, but the software systems are set up so they feed off of each other and that is where we had a big separation of thinking on the integrated system.  The whole concept has changed since the original installation of the system. The whole system needs to be rethought and the technology side needs to be revisited.  The surcharge fund was designed to help defray the 911 Centers’ costs of keeping up-to-date with the latest technology.  The initial purposes of the study committee was to incorporate people on the study committee who are familiar with running a 911 Center and have the knowledge on what is required to make them run smoothly. The intent was for the study committee to get together and present their ideas to the State legislators. Let the legislators make the final decision but have the counties initiate the ideas. Tower Update: Dan Summers reported on the tower update.  New Hanover County did receive FAA construction approval for a 200-foot tower at the County Annex Building.  The MDT does not have aquedate infrastructure at the Annex Building.  It may be a good idea to start thinking of relocating a MDT transmitter from the Flemington tower to Market Street and College Road. Although there is a drop in height it would certainly bring the signal closer to the density of the City.  We may be able to get another transmitter from the State.  The dip specs should be released in the next two weeks for the tower.  The soil borings and foundation work have been completed.  Two tower vendors have been contacted for availability of steel.  The tower is a prefab self-standing self-supporting 200-foot tower that will be tied to the generator. 5  A communication equipment demarcation point has been identified inside the building with all the coaxial cables running underground to the tower and then going up to the point.  The EOC and LEC have to be kept in place and ready to be activating until hurricane season is over which is the end of November.  A design team is working on the EOC preliminary.  Hopefully there will be some funds available after the jail project has been completed to hire out the EOC renovation project as apposed to using in house forces.  Installation and completion of the fiber lines should be completed this week at the County Annex.  Dan Summers would like to talk to the Board about a second off line for a second e mark from Bell South.  The Department of Justice has sent e-mail information regarding the State funding.  The State has not released the entire final amount, but the Department of Emergency Management is going to receive an allocation of approximately $63,000.  A suggestion for the allocation would be to to put together a Public Safety Committee and look at equipment that we could possibly request the State to purchase for us.  The allocation will be primary used for personnel protection and will be shared with other public safety agencies.  Dan Summers will keep the Committee posted on the Department of Justice link.  A public officials briefing is scheduled for November 14, 2002.  A full scale Brunswick nuclear plant exercise is scheduled for Tuesday, November 19, 2002 in New Hanover County. The staff of the Department of Emergency Management will travel to Raleigh, North Carolina for two additional days of training and evaluation from FEMA and the nuclear regulatory commission. NEW BUSINESS: Information Technology (IT) Sub-Committee: Bill Clontz reported on the Information Technology (IT) Sub-Committee.  The IT Sub-Committee did not meet in October.  He did provide an update to the Board on some items that the IT Committee is working on.  A contract with McKim and Creed has been executed for them to do the data collection for the point addressing system.  New Hanover County did not successfully negotiate a contract with W.K. Dickson to do the data collection for the point addressing system so the contract was offered McKim and Creed.  The Board of County Commissioners approved the contract.  The work is expected to begin November 1, 2002. 6  In order to manage the project, the GIS Department is going to divide the County into zones.  They are going to begin with the zones that already have new color orthophotos from the most recent fly over the County. The new orthophotos are gradually coming in and they are starting the mapping before we actually have the new color photos.  The first area that will be targeted will be the Greenfield Lake area. The color photos from that area are completed and it is an area that has some diversity. There are some commercial, some high-density condo apartment areas, and some residential areas.  The area contains enough variety of data points for a good review of how the whole process is going to work.  The contract with McKim & Creed states that four to six people will be equipped to work on the project at all times.  The time frame for the project is estimated to take approximately three or four months.  Bill Whisnant asked if there was going to be a public information component associated with the project?  Bill Clontz stated that Mark Boyer will issue a notice to the public informing them of the project and that there will be people in their neighborhoods on bicycles and with back packs to collect the data and not to get excited and call 911.  A video will be put together and the information will be available on the public access channel.  The City of Wilmington is already informing the public to make sure they have an address on their house.  The County has ordered a GPS unit of its own, but it has not arrived because the manufacturer is backlogged.  Andy Atkinson asked the question when an aerial is done will it be put into our system so that OSSI will be reading the new one instead of the old one?  A data check will done to verify that the data is correct. If the address cannot be identified it will be flagged with the numbers 9999 and that will indicate to us that there is a problem and it needs to be resolved.  Once the address is resolved it will be added to the OSSI system.  As the information is being turned in, each area will be tested for accuracy. No information will be inputted into the CAD system until the entire map is complete and has been tested.  If there are any new changes the County will update the files.  McKim and Creed will give us the initial data and it will become the County’s responsibility to collect it and pick it up. Block Ranges: Dan Summers asked the following question: As a result of the point addressing project will it be possible to start putting block ranges on new or replacement street and intersection signs? The block ranges would make it easier for emergency responders to locate addresses. He explained to the Board how the block range system works. 7  The City of Greensboro has implemented this system and it has greatly improved response time in the area.  The City of Greensboro actually made their signs bigger and used bigger lettering and numerals for easy identification. The signs are hanging above the streets.  Once the point addressing data collection is complete the information will be available to New Hanover County and the City of Wilmington if they choose to implement the block range project.  It is something that both New Hanover County and the City of Wilmington need to think about incorporating, as new areas are being developed and require new street signs and old street signs are replaced in routine maintenance.  It is a great aid particularly to new response personnel because it informs them which block range to turn on.  The City of Wilmington has started to put block numbers on some of its signs in the downtown area.  Block range would include residential areas as well as major roads and intersections.  Bill Whisnant will take the block range information back to the City of Wilmington and get feedback from them on the subject. Carolina Beach Dispatch: Bill Clontz reported on the work that the GIS Department has been doing with the Carolina Beach officials to prepare for the upcoming dispatching move scheduled to come into the Center in January.  Bruce Walker has been working closely with Major Still to get the zones at Carolina Beach identified.  The zone identifications have been completed and are in the CAD system.  The boundaries for Carolina Beach are all in place.  There are two or three areas that are outside the Carolina Beach municipal limits, but Carolina Beach is still responsible for them.  There is also a zone for Sunny Point that is included as part of the Carolina Beach area.  Even though the water tower and several pump stations are not in the town limits they have been included and identified in the point addressing project.  The water tower and the pump stations have been assigned addresses just in case of an emergency the address will show up in the CAD system.  Some minor work has been done on the street names in Carolina Beach to get the database ready and prepared for the takeover of Carolina Beach radio dispatch in January. Exception Report: Bill Clontz distributed a copy of the exception report for Board members to review.  The system is working well.  The new city position will resolve some of the issues at a faster rate. 8  It was stated that the exception report seems to be getting longer and longer and that some of the dates have been on the report for months.  Is there a reason why we can’t get them cleared?  There ought to be some kind of process we go through that if it is reported in July it ought to be fixed in some reasonable time frame like a week or two not three months.  Some of the errors may take more time to resolve especially when a whole area is not reading right, but those that read correctly and do not verify there should be some way to figure out what is needed to fix the problem and get it resolved so that they are not appearing month after month.  A majority of the problem is because the City of Wilmington has not filled the address position. Once the position is filled the errors should be resolved in a timelier manner. Most of the errors that are not resolved are predominately in the City of Wilmington, not the County.  Bill Whisnant stated that he would work with the City of Wilmington Planning Planning Department to resolve some of the errors. CAD and Other Related Information: Jan Kavanaugh gave a report on the CAD system.  When the CAD system crashed, OSSI spent a whole day trying to figure out what the problem was.  OSSI made four new executable network program changes.  We are not really sure which one of those changes helped but things are running much smoother.  Changes have also been made on the workstations.  The City of Wilmington MDT’s are having problems with their mobiles.  The actually equipment is working good on CAD, there are very few times when the system goes down.  The server seems to be pulling the information a lot quicker.  The resource monitor is a one-time license and maintenance contract.  The license is approximately $700 per station.  The message switch for the City of Wilmington has been up for over a week. It comes up and then goes down, it is running off of the local server.  The mobiles are having problems hitting our MSAG.  It is a message switch problem.  There are also problems with the RMS.  These are two separate issues. September Report: Steve Smith reported on the September report. Personnel and Training:  A review board was held and we are in the process of hiring people to fill those positions.  Last week we lost one telecommunicator, Tim Alford, he did a good job for us and was instrumental in constructing the Center’s web page. 9  Mr. Alford took a position with Brunswick County as their data base coordinator.  At this time there are three telecommunicators in training status. That is not counting the newly hired people.  Arrangements have been made for the newly hired people to attend EMD training in Jacksonville, North Carolina on October 29 through 31, 2002.  In December they will attend telecommunicator school.  We are trying to get the people trained within the six month training period as stated in the Standard Operating Procedures.  It seems to be working well.  Currently, there are three people in the final stages of training. Radio and Telephone Equipment:  At the last board meeting, the Board approved the request to get permission to approve the contract with Motorola for the telephone and console upgrade and the Dictaphone logging equipment upgrade.  The Board of County Commissioners approved the contract.  At the next Board meeting a representative from Dictaphone will be present to show Committee members the the features associated with the recently purchased voice logging equipment.  Many of the features will enable the agencies to access their own information from desktop. Building:  No work can be started until the Department of Emergency Management moves to the County Annex building.  A meeting was held with Freedom White (architects) and County staff to discuss the renovations.  The equipment will be upgraded; no new consoles will be added.  The more items that can be left alone will provide more available funding for upgrading furniture.  Both parties are working on the renovations. EMS:  I sent EMS some proposed dispatch polices and situations and I am waiting to hear feedback on the policies.  Ed Woodard stated that he had received the information and had some questions for Steve Smith about the information.  Work will continue on getting the actually dispatch polices out of the way especially fire and EMS. They are pretty cut and dry on what you expect to be asked and be told and how to respond.  After fire and EMS polices are complete, work will begin on the law enforcement polices. I think the policies will help alleviate some of the problems we are experiencing with the response information. 10 Phase Two – Point Addressing:  Phase two for point addressing is ongoing.  Having the XY coordinates in the system will move the information along quicker and enable the telecommunicators to provide better addresses when they are dispatching. EMS Model:  The State EMS people came into the Center to inspect the EMS model.  Early indications from them stated that the Center appeared to be in line.  Ed Woodard stated that EMS has been working on the new modular status that involves fire services, EMS, Department of Emergency Management, Public Safety Communications Center and the majority of all the public safety agencies for eight months.  There were two major EMS inspections -one was held back in August on-site and one in October.  The State EMS personnel reviewed team area sites and communications with the various agencies and prepared a preliminary report on what they observed.  They were very complimentary of the Center’s staff and its operation.  Ed Woodard stated that is a going to help us out tremounsly and they really appreciate the help.  The Center does not want to be a stumbling block.  All the agencies have certifications and goals that they strive for to get professional accreditation.  The Center does not want to be a hindrance in that account.  Ed Woodard stated that the State personnel were very complementary of all the agencies and an official notification will be presented in November. Pinnacle Police: Steve Smith reported on his visit from Adrian from Pinnacle Police. Pinnacle Police is a special police department in the private sector that would like to have access to New Hanover County’s 800 MHz system. They meet the same criteria as sworn law enforcement officers, but instead of being like security guards they have police powers. For an example: If they have a contract with the County on this building to provide security for this building they would have police powers on this premise. A lengthily discussion followed on the topic. Alternative 911 Center: Dan Summers reported on an alternative 911 Center.  He stated to the Board that when his department was originally going to move Second and Grace Streets a portion of the EOC would be designated as an alternative mini 911 Center.  Do we still want to try to do that concept at the County annex as well? If so, space will need to be partitioned off and equipment will need to be moved so that it can be sliced into the EOC. 11  Network connectivity to CAD is not necessary, but if there are some PC’s or some other phone equipment that could be transferred over to the County Annex so that an immediate hot transfer could be done just in case the Center needs to be evacuated. More importantly, it could act as an overflow for 911 communications to support the EOC.  Dan Summers, Steve Smith, Don Cahoon and the design team need to get together to discuss the issue.  Bill Clontz stated that the infrastructure is now in place at the County Annex building. The fiber connections are in place along with the tower.  It would also provide backup for the Center.  It would fulfill the requirements for NFPA. Telvation Presention: Steve Smith explained the reasoning behind the presenetiaon. The reason that we decided to do a presentation for the Board is because it is something that in its ideal form it will impact all of these agencies and entities. This was the best place to get everyone together to hear what they have to say about the benefits of 311 information. The 311 information has been around for a while and it has been asked about before in this area. Currently, Telvation is working on a project in Mecklenburg County. Jim Walters and Deepak Gupte from Telvation gave a presentation on the benefits of 311 information.  Once the presentation was concluded, it was decided to let the Board decide whether or not it would be something they would like to pursue. The various representatives would take the information back to their jurisdictions and talk it over to see if they would like to participate in the study. One main concern of the Board was who would be the main party responsible for the up keep of the program. The Board will need some idea of what the cost would be to do the study.  Telvation will contact Andy Atkinson in a day or so and put a proposal together that will include a price.  Dan Summers stated that there is very large media component here for public health with some issues coming to light as of 9-11. Public health could be a big player in issue.  Steve Smith stated that is one reason I wanted to have them talk to the board because in my mind it did fit under the communication thing because the technology is so similar to what we already use. The next scheduled meeting will be held on Wednesday, November 20, 2002, at 9:00 a.m. in Room 501 of the County Administration Building, 320 Chestnut Street, Wilmington, North Carolina. There will not be a meeting in December. Everett Ward made a motion to adjourn the meeting, Donnie Hall seconded the motion. There being no further business the meeting was adjourned at 11:10 a.m. 12