By Thomas J. Prohaska
The Buffalo News
LOCKPORT, NY — Retiring Niagara County Emergency Management Director James C. Volkosh last week proposed to a County Legislature committee a $20 million project to construct radio towers all over the county.
The 13 proposed towers would improve signal strength for fire and police agencies, as well as enable all the fire and police departments to speak directly to each other on the air. The fire companies already have interoperability, as it’s called, but the police aren’t part of that yet, Volkosh told the Community Safety and Security Committee.
He said the 13 tower sites already have been picked out, although he declined to identify them. He said the county already owns some of them.
However, Volkosh, whose last day on the county payroll is June 4, admitted that the county would have to borrow the money through a bond issue. That turned off Legislator W. Keith McNall, chairman of the Legislature’s Administration Committee.
“Not at this time,” was McNall’s response to the notion of a $20 million bond issue.
“I’d like to know a little more detail about what he’s proposing, what the communications people think,” McNall said.
“It’s a continuation of something that’s already in existence,” Volkosh said.
The county has been working on upgrading public safety agencies’ radio systems since 1999. All volunteer fire companies and ambulance services are now operating on the ultra-high frequency band, after the county bought up 42 UHF frequencies a decade ago.
“It buzzes through walls and concrete and ceilings like no other frequency. It’s like a drill,” Volkosh said.
With the 13 towers, linked by microwave communications, “What we’re looking at is saturation of signal. You’ll have a good signal everyplace,” he said.
The county has received federal Homeland Security grants for radio interoperability.
Although every police and fire agency that’s not already aboard will be asked to join the proposed system, Volkosh said no one will be forced to do so.
Copyright 2010 The Buffalo News