PRESENT:  B. Blanchard, G. Totman, P. Penniman, M. Robertson 
EXCUSED:  R. Booth
STAFF: S. Whicher, County Administrator; L. Shurtleff, Director, Emergency Response; J. Wood, County Attorney; W. Skinner, Public Information Coordinator; U. Mukherjee, Administrative Services Coordinator
GUESTS: N. Schuler, D. Kiefer, Board of Representatives; J. Lalley, Cornell University; J. Crance, E911 
CALL TO ORDER
The meeting opened at 11:32 a.m. 

ADDITIONS TO/DELETIONS FROM THE AGENDA
None 

APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF MAY 28 AND JUNE 4 MEETINGS
It was MOVED by Mr. Totman, seconded by Ms. Robertson, and unanimously adopted by voice vote by members present, to approve the May 28, 2002 minutes with the recommended changes.

It was MOVED by Mr. Totman, seconded by Ms. Robertson, and unanimously adopted by voice vote by members present, to approve the June 4, 2002 minutes.

PAGING SYSTEM
Mr. Lalley said that he has received a rough estimate of under $200,000 for a tower including a 12ft x 20 ft shelter but excluding transmission equipment and provision of road and power delivery to site. A more accurate estimate will be available in a couple of months. He stated that the format of the file for the maps for conversion to GIS, to see the distribution of population in conjunction with the propagation maps, was still awaited from NYSTEC. Mr. Whicher agreed to follow up. He requested information on the status of co-location on the Ithaca College tower as soon as it was finalized. He said the paging team was working on the issue of how the new system would integrate with the existing console at the Green Street Dispatch Center. The paging system will be data-capable but may have to be restricted to voice-only till the dispatch center moved to its new location next to the airport. This course of action will keep the design simple and save costs that might be incurred if the paging system was commissioned prior to the move of the dispatch center to its new location. 

It was mentioned that Onondaga County has just received a very low bid on a paging system.  Another concern was raised about communicating with the fire companies whose districts overlap into neighboring counties, eg., the Trumansburg Fire Company provides service into Schuyler County.  It is agreed that the geographic limits of the fire companies need to be covered, not just county lines.

Mr. Lalley said he hoped to have a draft resolution authorizing United Radio to undertake design and development of the paging system before the July 16 County Board meeting. The scope of work will include finalizing system design, completing the equipment inventory and ascertaining capital and operational costs.  He remarked it would not be desirable for United Radio to move too far ahead of the PSCS design as the two were inter-related. For instance, one vendor for the PSCS project was not contemplating use of the Taft Road site. He said that the possibility of avoiding building of towers was still being explored. The knox-box issue has been resolved but there will be capital expenditure involved in replacing receivers. 

It was decided that ComCap will meet briefly before the July 16 BOR meeting at 4:30 p.m. to review the agreement with United Radio and formally approve it.

Mr. Lalley left at this point at 11:52 a.m.

ONONDAGA COUNTY 911 CENTER
Ms. Blanchard spoke of her visit to the Onondaga County 911 Center. She said it was a large operation and 130 people worked there. She mentioned that ergonomic issues were given a lot of importance. They offered her suggestions on the size of conference rooms, etc. It was built in 1991. However, the diesel generator was inside the building, which, on hindsight, they felt was not the best location. 

She said she was informed that the entire money from the recent surcharge on cell phones was being allocated to the statewide wireless network project. She said she would obtain more details on this during her visit to Albany tomorrow.

PSCS RFP STATUS
Mr. Wood said that the RFP has generated a lot of interest. He was now working on responses to numerous questions from vendors especially the major ones, namely Motorola, MaCom and E. F. Johnson. He said the pre-bid conference held on June 18 was well attended and many small companies participated. In reply to a question by Mr. Penniman regarding our mode of response to the various questions asked at the conference, Mr. Wood said that answers would be sent to the vendors who have picked up the RFP. It was subsequently decided to put the answers on the web and inform all the vendors who had originally received the RFP by mail. Mr. Wood felt there was no need for any amendment to the RFP at this point. In reply to a question by Ms. Kiefer regarding the criteria for evaluation of the proposals, Mr. Wood said that while the RFP has not spelt out the details, it has stated the general criteria for evaluation. 

Next the group discussed the issue of alternative proposals and whether due importance was being given to them. Mr. Wood mentioned that the RFP incorporated a base proposal (95% portable), the first alternative (95% mobile) and any other alternative which met the mandatory criteria. Mr. Whicher clarified that even though the issue of alternatives such as Logical Trunk Radio was emphasized at the pre-bid conference, it seemed likely that the preferred system would be 800 MHz as NYS was expected to be the major source of funding. Hence the aim was to get the vendors to focus on 800 MHz and at the same time encourage them to come up with alternative proposals. Mr. Whicher added that the vendors have been told at the pre-bid conference that proposals with alternative frequencies over which the County had no control were not acceptable and would be considered to deviate from specifications. 

SWN UPDATE
Mr. Whicher said he, Ms. Blanchard and Mr. Shurtleff would meet the top officials of SWN tomorrow in Albany and endeavor to obtain a firm indication of state funding for the PSCS project. He said the County would seek a written agreement with the state as soon as the PSCS project was finalized. He was optimistic of the outcome.

911 BUILDING PROJECT STATUS
Mr. Whicher distributed a letter dated June 21 from Mr. Egner along with illustrations of the floor plan. He expected the plan to be finalized at the next meeting with Egner Associates on July 8. He mentioned that the initial Egner plan had an area much higher than our specifications and there was a meeting to find ways to reduce the size. However, he pointed out, the cost would not drop proportionately for a smaller building as the major portion of the cost is comprised of electronics, heating, ventilation, electrical and plumbing. He said drainage issues needed to be sorted out. He said Jackie Kippola is working with Egner Associates to finalize this phase of the contract. Ms. Blanchard announced that the next meeting of the Building Committee would be held on July 3 at 1 p.m. 

MOBILE DATA RADIO REPORT
Mr. Shurtleff distributed the NYSAC Weekly Wire dated June 21 regarding the status of county requests for the state legislature to approve legislation giving them authority for passing local laws to impose the wireless surcharge. He also distributed an article dated June 11 from the Wall Street Journal on the jamming of public safety communications by Nextel signals. He introduced Jack Crance, systems coordinator at the office of emergency response.

Mr. Shurtleff then proceeded to explain various aspects of the operation of the mobile data radio system. He said the mobile data radios operate out of police cars, with an additional unit in each fire station, and communicate with six transmission sites in the County. The Master Site Controller (MSC) determines which tower will be used for transmission. He said there were problems at the time of upgrading from DOS to Windows system.  Modems had to be recalibrated/replaced and HTE provided a new message switch. However, subsequently huge amounts of data slowed or shut the system down which prompted the need to increase storage capacity. The system operated well during the winter but is not working as well as it should at present. The major problem is with the MSC getting across messages to cars and efforts are on to resolve this. The other task is to increase the speed of data transmission. There was also the problem of interference occurring in the system, particularly from signals from the Nextel tower in Sapsucker Woods. This has now been resolved when we reprogrammed our radios to another frequency. However, the system is still running slowly and the Sheriff and the emergency dispatchers are not happy with its performance. The key issue is whether the infrastructure is capable of handling the current load and whether we need to upgrade the system.

DOT RELOCATION 
Ms. Blanchard referred to a recent letter from Senator James Seward to Mr. Joseph stating that $3 million has been included in the state budget for Tompkins County for DOT relocation. Hence the DOT project was ready to move forward. She has already spoken to Mr. Jon Edinger, the NYS DOT Regional Director, and informed him of the funding. Mr. Edinger said that $700,000 may also be available in regional DOT funds, as well as additional state monies. Mike Stamm (TCAD) and Planning Commissioner Ed Marx will develop a plan to execute the project. 

Mr. Whicher said that the Village of Lansing building code requires a digital alarm system which gives specific location information and they have requested that the County system be correlated at the time of upgrading of the paging system and the PSCS. 

It was MOVED by Mr. Totman, seconded by Ms. Robertson, and unanimously adopted by voice vote by members present, to hold an executive session to discuss potential sites for the DOT project.

Accordingly, the executive session began at 1:07 p.m. and concluded at 1:11 p.m. No Action Was Taken

ADJOURNMENT

The meeting adjourned at 1:12 p.m

Submitted by Ujjal Mukherjee, Administrative Services Coordinator 
Revisions in italics by Norma Jayne, Executive Assistant County Administration