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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Council committee approves $34m radio upgrade

Five members of a City Council committee voted yesterday in favor of paying Motorola $34.5 million to upgrade its often-maligned emergency radio system. moving the controversial plan closer to a final vote.
Public Property Commissioner Joan Schlotterbeck testified during a hearing that the city’s maintenance contract with Motorola for the current $62 million, 800-megahertz digital system will expire next June.
She said Motorola would agree to continue maintaining the old system only if the proposed upgrade — which could take up to two years to complete — is quickly approved by Council.
Darrell Clarke, the chairman of Council’s Public Property and Public Works Committee, said he and four other members yesterday “felt comfortable enough” with the plan to back it. Two other committee members, Frank Rizzo and Donna Reed Miller, did not attend the hearing.
A final vote by the rest of City Council is expected in about two weeks, Clarke said.
Schlotterbeck said the upgraded system, which would be leased by the city for four years, would include 50 digitial repeaters to improve radio communications below grade and in high-rise buildings.
Firefighters, cops and city prisons will get 2,700 new radios in the upgrade, which would also reband the current system to avoid cell phone interference, she said.
The upgrade, which will be paid with money from the state’s 911 Fund, has the backing of Police and Fire Department officials, as well as their respective unions.
Councilman Bill Green, who attended the hearing but does not sit on the Public Works Committee, wondered why the city didn’t put the upgrade out to bid.
Green said he was told by committee members that putting out a Request for Proposal (RFP) would take too long, and rebuilding the system from scratch would be too expensive.
“Basically, Motorola is able to put a gun to our head because we didn’t manage this process properly,” he said.
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About The PhillyConfidential team

Dana DiFilippo has covered murder, mayhem and miscellany at the Daily News since 2000. She grew up in Delaware County and studied journalism and photography at Penn State University. E-mail tips to difilid@phillynews.com.

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Stephanie Farr has been reporting for the Daily News since 2007, covering everything from gay porn stars who entered the burglary business to moon trees, skinheads, murders and naked bike rides. She covers crime, both in the city and suburbs, and keeps clippings of bizarre Associated Press articles. Her favorite this year was the story about the drunk in Punxsutawney who gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dead opossum. E-mail tips to farrs@phillynews.com.

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Phillip Lucas joined the Daily News crime team in 2011. He grew up on the mean streets of Seattle and studied journalism and psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Before landing in the City of Brotherly Love, Phillip was a reporter for The News Journal in Wilmington, Del. Email tips to lucasp@phillynews.com.

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Morgan Zalot is the newest crime reporter at the Daily News, starting in 2011 after interning at the paper twice as a Temple University journalism student. In her past stints at the DN, she covered just about everything, from drunken Phillies fans to a barber shop in a high school to a grisly murder-suicide. She’s a born-and-raised Philly girl who grew up in the Northeast. E-mail tips to zalotm@philly.com.

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