During a special work session held by the Moore County Board of Commissioners, Southern Pines Fire Chief Hampton Williams said municipalities were led to believe that the County would be funding the purchase of radios to become compliant with the FCC-mandated narrowband system. The County has selected the State Highway Patrol's VIPER system for emergency communications throughout the county.
With almost thirty EMS, Police, and Fire and Rescue members in attendance at the Tuesday, February 7 meeting, Williams told the Board: “Now at the zero hour you turn around and say, ‘You gotta have money to buy your radios.’ That just doesn’t work for us.”
The towns and villages in the county all utilize the County's emergency communications infrastructure, and so have little choice but to move to the VIPER system as the County does.
Williams said the municipalities were told not to budget for radios over the last two years, because the County would cover those costs.
“That year [2010] went by, and I let money ride because this was up in the air,” said Williams. “Last year, I didn’t even put money in the budget for radios.”
The debate about who should pay for the new VIPER-compatible radios began at a January Commissioners work session, during which staff was directed to inform municipalities that they would be responsible for a share of the cost of the VIPER upgrade.
Residents of towns and villages pay County property taxes, as well as municipal property taxes. Williams told the Commissioners that to ask municipalities to fund their portion of the VIPER project would be the third tax payment made by municipality residents.
“That’s double taxation, and I personally don’t see how you can ask us to do that,” said Chief Williams. “We have already paid twice — now you are going to ask us to pay a third time.”
County Manager Cary McSwain asked municipalities to apply for grants to help offset the cost of the VIPER system. But the deadline for the grants program was January 31. Only six of the ten towns in Moore County had applied for the $10,000 grant as of January 17.
Chief Williams explained that some of the municipalities are too large to be eligible for the grants — or the time has expired to apply.
“Although grants are nice — they are not the save-all for this project,” said Chief Williams, “It’s kind of late in the process to depend on that.”
According to Williams, a year ago McSwain told the fire departments at an Emergency Services Advisory Committee [ESAC] meeting to refrain from setting any money aside in their budgets to pay for the radio upgrades.
The municipalities left that meeting with the understanding that the County would be paying for the upgrades, Williams said, or else the fire departments would have been setting money aside to help pay for the new system.
McSwain said that direction from the county preceded the decision to select the VIPER system. With that decision still up in the air, the County advised ESAC to delay budgeting for new radios.
“Seems to be an understanding that the County was going to pay for this,” said Commissioner Tim Lea, addressing Chief Williams, “even to the point that you were asked not to put this in your budget.”
Upgrading to the VIPER system is expected to cost $4.5 million and the transition must be completed by January 2013. This new system will result in interoperability across EMS, Fire and Rescue, and Police radio communications throughout the County.
If each municipality purchases its own radios separately, Williams said, then operators will not have the training on each system, reducing interoperability.
“We feel like if you don’t fund this — you don’t do the proper handling of it — you are going to wind up with a hodgepodge of radios just like you have now,” explained Chief Williams.
Chairman Larry Caddell, who served as a firefighter in Carthage for eighteen years, said, “That inoperability is big. You just don’t know how big that is, until you have a big fire.”
In the end Chief Williams urged the Board to consider funding one hundred percent of the cost for radios.
“We’re asking that you don’t discriminate against over half the County’s residents and make them pay for more than their fair share for life safety issues,” said Williams, “We are all from Moore County, and we all depend on emergency services.”
The municipalities are asking that the radios be purchased by the County initially, with all future maintenance of the radios to be handled by the municipalities.
With fire and police departments finalizing their Fiscal Year 2012-2013 budgets in four weeks, Chief Williams asked the Board to make a decision one way or the other.
The Commissioners will again take up the issues surrounding funding for VIPER during a special work session on Tuesday, February 21.
“You couldn’t make a decision now if you wanted to,” said Commissioner Nick Picerno.
