STAFF REPORT - CITY COUNCIL/SUCCESSOR AGENCY/PUBLIC FINANCE AUTHORITY

The Chief of Police Recommends the Council approve to upgrade the police department's radio system, hand held and repeater.

The police department currently uses the MIP 5000 radio system which has met its end of life.  The police department's dispatch center has been using the MIP 5000 radio system since 2000 and they no longer make replacement parts for this system.

Since 2000, the police department has been using the MIP 5000 radio system as its primary radio system to communicate with emergency personnel out in the field.  The MIP 5000 is no longer in use by most agencies and Motorola no longer covers the maintenance or makes parts for this system.  Our system is beginning to show its age and is having problems with the channel remaining open after someone has made a transmission and more recently we lost connection with Parlier PD for over 10 hours.  

In October 2020, CalDOJ and the FBI issued Safety Bulletin 20-09, which requires all law enforcement agencies to begin transmitting over an encrypted channel to help protect the identity and secured information of people law enforcement comes in to contact with and goes into effect starting January 1, 2021, however they are allowing agencies to transmit with some minor modifications on a temporary basis.  

The department has contacted Motorola Solutions and obtained a quote to purchase a new system at a cost of $398,900.00 or we could make 3 payments of $136,900.00 over three years, with the first year not due until a year after the signing of the contract.

The police department would also have to update their current handheld radios to accommodate the encrypted radio traffic.  The Radios we have selected are the Motorola APX NEXT radios.  The APX Next radio has a cell capability where if the officer is out of radio range, the radio has the ability to transmit through the cell phone system and reach back to the police department to ensure the security of the publics information and most importantly maintaining officer safety the total cost for the new radios is $139,396.00 and this can be broken up into three years of payments at a cost if approximately $50,262.29 or into a 5 year at $30, 995.54. The first payment would not be due until the one year after the contract is signed.

The police department's patrol vehicles would have to be reprogramed to except the Encryption at a cost of $10,986.80, for 20 vehicles.

By making the above upgrade we would ensure the police department would have the radio system that would be supported and the department would not have to worry about when the system would go down next.

The impact to the general fund would be $538,296.00 plus $10,986.80 for the reprogramming of the vehicle radios, or $187,162.29 over the next 3 years, plus $10,986.80. 

The cost to reprogram the vehicle radios would be a one time cost of $10,986.80 that can't be broken up into payments.

This cost is unbudgeted and would be fully a General Fund expense.