County plans $21M upgrade of radio system
Sheriff: Towns can invest in new radios for first responders
BY MELISSA KARSH Staff Writer
Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno unveiled plans for a $21 million infrastructure upgrade to the county's radio system by 2011 at a June 13 Sea Bright Council meeting.

Sheriff Kim Guadagno

Guadagno said her visit to Sea Bright was part of her plan to go to all the municipalities in the county to invite them to join in and upgrade their emergency radio systems as well.

The radio upgrade is the result of the 2004 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate that all non-federal public safety licensees start to use narrowband channels by Jan. 1, 2013, according to a U.S. Department of Justice narrowband fact sheet provided by the Sheriff 's Office.

"Very much like your television sets won't work after 2009, well, many of our radios will not work after 2011 and at the latest after 2013 because the FCC has mandated that we stop selling the radios that many of us now use," said Guadagno at the council meeting.

The FCC mandate to narrowband, or split the frequencies, will result in existing area coverage being cut in half, according to a Sheriff 's Office fact sheet.

Along with this mandate, equipment that cannot be operated in digital mode and on the new split channels may no longer be distributed, according to the fact sheet.

Guadagno said the county plans to purchase about 1,800 new radios, which would include the purchase of about 24 radio frequencies on a UHF system at the cost of $21 million.

An additional $15 million will have to be invested by local municipalities to purchase new radios for police, fire, first aid and the Department of Public Works if those towns so choose, said Guadagno.

"We provide for Sea Bright fire and first aid services; hopefully, in the very near future we will be able to provide to your dispatch services, if that is a service you desire," Guadagno said.

She added, "My worst fear as sheriff is on 2011 you dial 911 and you can't get through to my communication center … because our radios don't work."

Patrick Mason Jr., Sea Bright Fire Department communications officer, said the borough is about 90 percent compliant with the narrowbanding of the analog system currently in place.

"If you take the existing 10 county fire channels, the existing five EMS fire channels and the existing … two or three police channels and you narrowband those frequencies, you are going to go from roughly 18 channels to triple the amount of frequencies," saidMason. "[That's] more than enough to put together a VHF … radio system that would be analog- and digital-capable in Monmouth County, and we won't have to get rid of all of our radio equipment."

Mason said the switch from VHF to a UHF system, which the county is proposing to use, would result in thousands of radios that are currently in use becoming obsolete.

Guadagno said the only way to guarantee clear communication after 2011 is to go with the UHF format rather than VHF for the whole county.

James Ramsey, chief police radio, said that with VHF there would be too much congestion in the area.

"The problem with mixing the analog and digital, which the county did, is it creates a time delay, which Ocean County has," said Ramsey.

Guadagno said the county is going through the process of hiring another consultant to build out the radio communications of the Monmouth County Sheriff 's Office, which is one of the four Homeland Security Regions for communications interoperability planning in the state.

"If we don't go to narrowband, we won't be able to talk with any of the other counties in the state for our center," said Guadagno, adding that Monmouth County is one of the last counties in New Jersey to make the shift.