At this year’s annual budget referendum, town residents will be asked to approve the transfer of $4.6M from the general fund to a special fund for the Town Radio Systems Improvement Project. All the emergency services — Granby Police Department (GPD), Granby Ambulance Association (GAA), Lost Acres Fire Department (LAFD), Granby Department of Public Works (DPW) and the Certified Emergency Response Team (CERT) — are asking for your approval for this critical upgrade to our emergency services infrastructure. If approved, this will start a long-overdue, two-year project.
Granby’s emergency services organizations have been using antiquated radio equipment for more than 20 — and in some cases 30 — years. There has been some new equipment purchased including portables at the PD and LAFD and new mobile radios for new ambulances/fire trucks/cruisers, but none of our infrastructure, towers, base radios or dispatch console, have been updated.
Granby Dispatch Center is using a dispatch console that is 24 years old, installed when the current building was built in 2000. The console is all outdated technology and is currently in disrepair. It does not function properly when parts are no longer available to repair it. Our current radio provider has made repairs, but they are only temporary.
There have been significant adjustments in the dispatch center over the years, with addition of the Granby Schools’ camera/security systems, new 911 systems, updated computer-aided dispatch tools and additional cameras/monitoring throughout the town hall complex. All of these have been added as best as possible but can be likened to adding square items into a round hole.
The proposed project will completely upgrade the dispatch center, console, furniture, lighting, and organization, bringing the center into compliance with current emergency services standards.
The GPD radio system was installed new when the station was built in 2000. It is currently a two-repeater tower system, using copper wires routed through the phone system to allow the towers to communicate. Barely 50 percent of the town is covered, allowing an officer to talk to dispatch by portable. In the “dead spots,” only a mobile radio in a cruiser can reach dispatch, and there are some areas of town where even that is not possible. Support from surrounding towns is also challenged as many of them have moved to newer systems, with which the GPD equipment can’t communicate. This makes inter-agency support difficult and potentially dangerous.
The proposed system will cover 95 percent of Granby, allowing an officer to talk by portable to dispatch. The new radios will allow communication with all the surrounding departments.
GAA is the primary responder to medical calls in Granby, East Granby, and East Hartland. It also provides mutual aid support to surrounding towns that reciprocate when needed in Granby. It transports to hospitals as far away as Bay State in Springfield and Charlotte Hungerford in Torrington.
The current radio system is spotty at best, even though it was upgraded to a new tower location in 2001. There are currently even more limitations on its portable use, especially when operating in East Granby and East Hartland. During medicals, while working on a patient, conditions can change requiring a call for additional help, which currently requires a GAA member to go out to the ambulance and use the mobile, due to the poor coverage by portable.
The current system is also a shared-use channel, between CMED, (medical control in the State of Connecticut), Litchfield and Middlesex County users and the Town of Glastonbury. This causes interference during times of radio use, delaying the transmission of critical messages. GAA has upgraded its radios as new ambulances have been purchased, but the underlying tower/radio system is woefully inadequate.
The proposed system will cover 95 percent of their primary response area allowing a medic to talk by portable to dispatch. The new radios can communicate with all the surrounding towns they respond to and reach the hospitals they transport to. This new system will have no other users on it, eliminating the current interference.
The LAFD uses a radio system developed during the 70’s. They can no longer purchase new equipment compatible with it and have resorted to buying used equipment off eBay or from other departments. The portables only have a range of several miles, requiring that all communication back to the dispatch center be done with a mobile radio.
The system is completely standalone, no other departments in the area are using it. This created a situation requiring the purchase of additional mobiles and portables to allow LAFD responders to communicate with surrounding towns. Mutual aid has increased over the years as staffing levels have decreased, driving this need.
The oldest mobile radio in emergency-response use was installed 33 years ago. Mobiles used by the officers are over 30 years old. There have been updates in some equipment with the last new mobile and portable purchased in 2007. Newer portables have been purchased for the chiefs and our new squad, but the rest of the fleet still has outdated equipment.
The LAFD applied for and was granted a new frequency from the FCC, but we now need the towers and infrastructure to fully utilize it.
This proposed system replaces all our radios with new ones, compatible with all surrounding departments and our new frequency. It provides for 95 percent coverage with a portable; provides an emergency “Mayday” function to help when a firefighter is down or trapped. It also provides a new paging system to alert our members, replacing the ones on our current system.
DPW upgraded its radio system in 2009, with a single tower/repeater, getting it off the old frequency it had. The system has significant gaps in service, critical when the team is working at remote sites, doing snow removal, or assisting with storm damage mitigation and assessment. DPW also provides assistance to surrounding towns and can’t communicate with them. This new system will allow it to remedy that gap, provide improved coverage/clarity throughout the town of Granby. It will upgrade all their portables/mobiles.
The CERT team provides Emergency Shelter services during times of need. Currently it uses a walkie talkie system based on GMRS radio, a public system with limited range. CERT also provide traffic control assistance at key events in town. This new system will provide it with its own system with full portable coverage for all its operational areas and provide radio communication ability to the Dispatch Center as well as with GAA, GPD, DPW and LAFD.
The system will allow the leadership of all the emergency services to talk with other emergency services leaders. Previously this could only be done on a limited ability through the Dispatch Center. With this new system, information transfer is more efficient with direct communication to the members who need it, reducing gaps and improving response. This interoperability will also extend to our State and Federal partners, filling a long overdue need that was identified during the 9/11 attacks.
The expected lifecycle of the system is between 10 and 15 years after installation. With proper planning, the system will be upgraded over time, in sections, avoiding the need for another one-time expenditure of this magnitude.
To accomplish all these improvements, a tower system was designed that keeps the recurring costs to a minimum, provides expandability for the future, allows for remote monitoring and management, and establishes all sites with a backup system that is emergency services qualified.
Towers had to be chosen that had a good, direct line of site to each other to use a point-to-point radio system to communicate, eliminating expensive fiber cable runs between the towers. All the tower sites in the proposal are existing radio sites. Two are commercial cell tower sites, one is a site operated by the Connecticut Airport Authority, one is an existing ham radio site, and the last is the existing tower behind Granby Town Hall.
The approval to access all the sites has already been established/granted. The ham radio site will be purchased by the Town of Granby, this will facilitate the removal of the old and the installation of a new emergency-services-only tower. All these costs are included in the $4.6M.
We greatly appreciate the help and support of the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance. Their vision and support have put Granby in a solid position to execute this project. The funding is coming from the general fund of the Town of Granby. The BOS and BOF are also investigating other funding options that would allow the Town to reduce the resources from the general fund, but we need to start this project immediately.
The emergency service providers of the Town of Granby implore the public to vote “yes” on the annual budget and allow us to execute this long overdue project. Members of the TOG Radio Committee started working on these issues as far back as 2015. The Committee believes we have a solid design, based on tried-and-true technologies, that offers the best, most cost-effective solution to keep our responders safe and allow them to provide you with the best possible services.
Chief Horr is chair of the Town of Granby Radio Committee.