Lebanon County’s emergency communications system is getting a major makeover.
The county will build seven towers and distribute about 2,000 radios to first responders throughout Lebanon County at a budgeted cost of $19 million. The radio system and radios total $12.9 million and the towers are estimated to run between $6 and $7 million.
The final total cost for the entire system is subject to change since the bid for tower construction has not been awarded.
Requests for proposals to construct seven new towers were distributed in late June, and Dowd plans to present those bids to County Commissioners on Aug. 15. When completed, Lebanon County will move from a 10-tower system to 13 and will own 11 instead of its current four towers.
“The goal of replacing this system is two-fold,” said Bob Dowd, director of the county’s Department of Emergency Services. “Number one is to bring current technology to first responders, better technology. And the other is to take advantage of that opportunity to fix any coverage gaps that we can. You don’t get all of it, it’s impossible to have a perfect system. But we’re going to do our best to fix any major holes that we can.”
The decision to own more towers over renting them will benefit the county financially in the long run. Dowd said the cost to build a tower is between $500,000 and $750,000 while renting a tower for emergency communications is about $200,000 annually with a yearly rental increase of about 5 percent.
“Owning our own towers means we don’t have to rent space,” said Dowd. “Every two to three years you are essentially buying a tower (by renting). It does make sense for us to own towers where feasible. Our return on investment is a little more accelerated if we’re able to lease space out on those towers to others. As long as it doesn’t interfere with the ability to offer our services, our answer (to leasing space) is absolutely yes because it will lower costs to taxpayers.”
In addition to tower ownership, the county will also own the land on which they sit.
“We have finished writing the (tower construction) bid proposal and it went out last week,” said Dowd. “Land acquisition has been running behind schedule, that’s what has delayed us by one year. So we haven’t started building anything yet.”
Land acquisition was tedious and time-consuming because of negotiations with certain landowners, he added, with talks breaking down for various reasons.
“Some of it is purchased, some of it is leased, some of it is donated,” said Dowd. “We purchased a lot from Schaefferstown, we purchased a lot from Met-Ed. We’re renting several lots and some land we’re getting for like $1 or basically donated to us. North Londonderry leased us land for $1.”
Land acquisition could have happened much quicker, but that came with a high price tag. In some locations the county desired to build new towers, costs were prohibitive.
“There are a lot of moving parts with this, and is a reason this is all taking longer because we have to have everything aligned up,” said Dowd. “We had the original assumption that you had, that people would be willing to work with us because we’re in public safety. There are some who have been willing to do that.”
Other factors include zoning considerations, he added. He said that these difficulties led county officials to revise their original plan of constructing nine new towers to seven.
Once operational, the addition of new towers and an emergency communications system will enhance 911 coverage to 95 percent of Lebanon County. Not included in that figure is Cold Spring Township, the northernmost section of the county.
“The way the mountain range curves up there, we’d have to build several towers to cover that area,” said Dowd. “We exclude that from our coverage, but the answer to that is the mobile command post that we’re still building, if there is an event out there, it becomes the tower site for that event. When you look at it on a map, it’s mountain, valley, mountain, valley, mountain, valley, and there’s no way to cover all of that from a single tower spot.”
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The plan is to start testing the new emergency communication system in late spring or early summer of 2025 and go live by fall of that year. Dowd noted the timetable is very “dynamic” until it’s known when tower construction will be completed.
“That’s an aggressive timetable, I will be honest. But I think we should be able to make pretty good headway once these bids are awarded,” he said. “The awarding of the bids is the big thing that needs to happen. Once that happens, we’re going to start ripping through this.”
The implementation of the new radio system is one that Dowd wishes had happened years ago. The old system, while still functional, doesn’t communicate with modern technology, hence the reason the new first responder radios are in the county’s possession but won’t be used until the system is tested and operational.
“The system is currently 20 years old,” he said. “In a world where most people don’t keep a cellphone for more than two or three years, 20 years is old technology.”
Dowd added that as long as he is department director, he plans to take a different approach that avoids purchasing new equipment every few decades.
“As long as I sit in this chair, the plan is to make a continual fixed investment in the system instead of waiting 20 years and buying it brand new again,” he said. “That will prevent us from being in the situation we’re currently in right now, and that’s using a system that can no longer be supported, a system you can no longer buy radios for. You don’t want to be there. You want to do regular upgrades, which is a much more efficient way that prevents you from being in a difficult spot.”
Dowd emphasized that the current system has back-up radios and parts that can be supplied by vendors on an as-needed basis, adding that the overarching issue is that new technology doesn’t communicate with the old emergency communications system.
“This isn’t just a single piece of equipment that sits in a rack that you turn on and off,” he said. “It is a large system with lots of components. There are individual pieces that can fail and when that happens, we address them, we repair them. We maintain them and we have spare equipment and we replace it with spare equipment. We do all of the correct things to ensure the system is up and running. There is no fear of the current system not functioning.”
The biggest issue in the emergency services world in Lebanon County is aging radios that are owned and operated by first responders, according to Dowd.
“They are aging and they don’t want to put money into them if they don’t have to. I don’t blame them for not wanting to do that,” he said. “They’re going to get replaced shortly and if you can get by, you want to. However, all of them have the same requirement that they still operate in a way that is conducive to their job, that they are still functional. You can’t buy a new radio that works with our current system.”
The $19 million emergency communications system is being financed through an American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant, with about $6 million of that figure being financed via a bond the county floated in December 2021.
County Commissioners passed a $42.5 million, 25-year bond with a 2.5 percent average interest rate. The lion’s share of the bond issue covers the $31.7 million DES complex in North Cornwall Township.
“This is a project that started in 2021, so all of the financing – the ARPA grant and the county bond – occurred at that time,” said Dowd. “This is a five-year project that is not impacting future budgets.”
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