HOT SPRINGS -- The Hot Springs Board of Directors unanimously adopted a resolution approving a 2.6-mill General Fund levy for the current tax year during a special meeting Tuesday.
According to the resolution, revenue generated from the property tax will be dedicated to improving the police and fire departments' communications systems, a project city officials have estimated will cost $6 million. The millage will be levied for two years, raising an estimated $3 million. Money from other city funds will pay the balance of the cost.
"We're going to absolutely spend every penny of the millage on the system," City Manager David Frasher told the board. "It won't be transferred to other funds for other purposes."
The board also unanimously adopted a resolution authorizing the city to develop a request for proposals for vendors wanting to bid on the project.
Responding to opponents of the millage, City Director Larry Williams said their desire to put the levy as a voter referendum would further delay the city from addressing long-standing issues of capacity, coverage and manufacturer support with the current system.
Williams said the board had to approve the tax before the Garland County Quorum Court meets Monday to levy 2016 county, municipal and school taxes that will be billed and collected next year. Frasher said it will take 18 months to carry out a new system.
"We don't have time to refer this to the voters and let the quorum court set millage rates," Williams said. "If we decide to have elections next year, and the voters approve this, as I anticipate they would, we can't do a special mailing to do a tax statement on this.
Firefighters and police officers filled the board chambers inside City Hall on Tuesday, showing solidarity for an issue that Police Chief Jason Stachey said directly affects them. The current system covers only 80 to 85 percent of the city's 35 square miles, Stachey said, endangering officers responding to areas beyond the reach of the lone repeater tower on West Mountain.
"Keying up their radio and to not be able to call for help -- it's a very scary feeling," he told the board. "The many men and women standing behind me, they've probably keyed up their radio in a critical environment and had nothing happen. That is a very, very lonely feeling, especially at 3 o'clock in the morning when you desperately need someone to come to your rescue."
Mike Harper, project manager with Federal Engineering, the consulting firm the city paid $130,000 to advise its system upgrade, told the board the new system infrastructure wouldn't be proprietary, but Frasher said the city won't know that until it solicits bids.
Harper said Federal Engineering is recommending a Project 25, Phase 2 system, which would probably put the city on the state-owned Arkansas Wireless Information Network.
"By it's very nature, [Project 25] is nonproprietary and standards based," he told the board. "You might get alternate proposals that aren't standards based, but our recommendation would be to go to a Project 25, Phase 2."
He said the Federal Communications Commission has licensed the city for six 800 MHz frequencies. The city's compliance with Phase 2 of Project 25 -- a nationwide campaign to move all public safety entities toward a trunked system that can allow simultaneous communications between multiple users -- would give the police and fire departments 12 talk paths, Fire Chief Ed Davis said.
He said a controller channel would occupy one talk path, seamlessly shifting communications between channels and allowing multiple talk groups to converse without interruption even when the number of groups exceeds the number of channels.
Davis told the board that bid specifications will require any infrastructure the city selects to be compatible with the Arkansas Wireless Information Network, even if the city chooses a proprietary system. The Police Department is a part-time AWIN user with emergency access to statewide interoperability channels used by the approximately 900 local, state and federal agencies on the Arkansas Wireless Information Network.
"It would not be a proprietary system that would exclude anyone else's radios," Davis said. "We cannot do that. It must be plug and play. Anything that would operate in Phase 1 or 2 in the 700 or 800 spectrum would have to be able to be placed on this system."
City and Garland County officials have said they have agreed that their systems will be interoperable. The county has proposed upgrading to the Arkansas Wireless Information Network for its public safety communications.
"We will both be able to operate on each other's systems," Davis told the board. "Anything we buy will be able to operate on [the Arkansas Wireless Information Network], and anyone operating on [the Arkansas Wireless Information Network] will be able to operate on our system with their devices."
State Desk on 11/24/2016