Aldermen, Board of

A special meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Thursday, December 13, 2012, at 7:00 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chamber. President Brian S. McCarthy presided; Deputy City Clerk Patricia Piecuch recorded. Prayer was offered by Deputy City Clerk Patricia Piecuch; Alderman Cookson led in the Pledge to the Flag. The roll call was taken with 9 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman Dowd, Alderman Melizzi-Golja, Alderman Caron, Alderman Sheehan, Alderman Vitale, Alderman Pressly were not in attendance; Alderman Moriarty arrived after roll call at 7:05 p.m. Mayor Donnalee Lozeau was also in attendance. R-12-81 AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR AND CITY TREASURER TO ISSUE BONDS NOT TO EXCEED THE AMOUNT OF ONE MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS ($1,600,000) FOR THE FIRST PHASE OF THE RADIO COMMUNICATIONS UPGRADE As provided for in NRO 5-28, a presentation on R-12-81 was given by Bill Mansfield, City-Wide Communications Director. Mayor Lozeau The resolution before you tonight is to look at taking on the first phase of updating and upgrading our communications system. When I arrived here in 2008, it was brought to my attention that we were going to have to look at our radio communications, our systems, our infrastructure because it needed to have some changes and some upgrades. We put together a team to start looking at that. Over the last year or so the team has really worked pretty diligently taking as close a look as we could on what some alternatives might be, what it meant about radios versus towers, different things like that. This evening I have asked Mr. Mansfield, our City-Wide Communications Director, to come in and present the plan that the radio committee is recommending. As part of his presentation, he’ll show you who was on the radio committee so you’ll know what the participation was and you’ll see that it’s broad from across the city. With that, Mr. President, if I could invite Mr. Mansfield up. President McCarthy Certainly. Mayor Lozeau When the presentation is done, I’ve invited the CFO and the City Treasurer here to go through. You’ll recall in May you were presented with kind of an outlook at bonding and what we had planned. I’ve had that updated based on the resolution. We’ll be prepared to speak to that after the presentation. President McCarthy Thank you very much. Let the record show that Alderman Moriarty has joined us. Bill Mansfield Good evening. I am the Radio System Assistant Manager for the City. I have been involved with the City Wide Communications for probably since it’s inception, 12 years ago when we built the Radio Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 2 System here within the City. What I want to do is just go over a little bit about what we currently have in the city for communications. The communications system that we have was purchased in 2000. At that point in time, we spent about four years prior to that planning out a system that would move multiple systems that every agency had into one system. We were also looking to increase radio coverage throughout the city, increasing the amount of radio channels that were available to everybody in the city, provide entities without communications with radio communications, provide interoperability with every city entity. Also, what we wanted to do with the 800 megahertz radio frequencies was to get better building penetration. A lot of the agencies that were out there such as fire were VHF radio frequencies, which did not have any or very little building penetration. We went to a trunk radio system so we could share channels with each other. We had a digital analog mix mode radio system, all public system is on digital, all nonpublic safety is on analog channels. There is three sites within the city which provide us with 98 percent in-building coverage, not in basements, but at least inside buildings we have 98 percent coverage. It is a 10-channel system. I don’t want to get too technical into it, but all these channels are shared by every entity within the City. The Simulcast system which provides us with that 98 percent coverage, there are 1500 mobile and portable radios operating on the system to date. The system that we currently have is a Motorola proprietary system. Here we are in 2012, the radio system has never been upgraded. Network infrastructure is operating on 1990’s technology and the radio network infrastructure is non-repairable. There are many computers or servers that are in the system that have not been replaced since the system was put into place, they are 12-years old now and we cannot get anything repaired on the system with regards to the network at this point in time. Just to give you an idea of what the network infrastructure is, on the right-hand side, that is called a Zone controller. I’ve spoken at several other meetings over the years about the Zone controller and the power supplies. The power supplies are in this. As you can see there is a yellow light on. There is a yellow light and a green light. There is only supposed to be a green light on. The yellow light is on because there failure within system. That has been cleared up at this point in time. We have repaired that. But the two power supplies, the ones with the silver handles on them, and they slide in. Those are probably the most vital part of that particular system. We lose those, we lose the Zone controller and we start losing communications within the city. On the left-hand side, the two servers at the top and the two servers at the very bottom, are servers that are 12-years old that have been in place since the system was installed. That is not all of the system. The system has actually five different sites to it and there is a lot of computer equipment that is in these different sites. We are trying to focus on the network infrastructure at this point in time. Most of your mobile and portable radios are non-repairable. You can see the stickers that are on the radios. Those are not my stickers, those are stickers that were sent down from the shop saying the radios are non-repairable. The radios that are in operation today, the majority of them are 12-years old. They were brought with the original system and we are starting to see more and more failures on a daily basis with these radios. This is just a photo of the inside of one of the chassis of a mobile radio. You can see the black marks towards the bottom. That is basically a burnt out, what we call a power amplifier. They no longer make those power amplifiers and that radio is now junk. The majority of the radios that we see coming in, these are nonpublic safety radios. The majority of them that are coming in today are coming in with this power amplifier that is burnt out. We just basically shelve the product because we cannot us it any longer. As the Mayor has said, the Mayor formed a Radio Committee at the beginning of the year to discuss the issues we are having with the radio communication system. On that Committee is the Board of Alderman President, Brian McCarthy, from Finance, Chief Financial Officer John Griffin, Emergency Management Director, Justin Cates, Angelo Marino from GIS, from Public Works is Andy Patrician, Fire, Assistant Chief, Steven Galipeau, Police is Captain Jeffrey Bukunt and myself as well as the other gentleman who works with me in the Communications Division. Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 3 During this time, when the Committee was formed, what we did is reviewed Infrastructure life cycles when parts and pieces of the infrastructure were going to fall off the repair bill with the platform. We also looked at mobile and portable life cycles and non-system life cycles such as the air conditioning units out at the sites, battery back-up, UPS’s we looked at everything within the system and tried to figure out what the life cycles were. The Committee waived the options for the system replacement, reviewed equipment inventories, basically determined there was an immediate need and that immediate need is to replace the network infrastructure. The Committee got together again and reviewed a multi-year plan for the replacement of the system. The Committee had several options; stay with the current system and hope the infrastructure does not fail, replace the entire system, upgrade the entire radio system all at once or upgrade the radio system with a phased-in approach over multiple years. There are two manufacturers. I have found there is a third manufacturer, but they do not have any standing at this point within the trunking infrastructure manufacturers. The two that I put up here are Harris and Motorola Solutions. Those are the two that are primary manufacturers that produce trunk radio systems across the world. It’s not just the United States, it’s everywhere. Currently, our radio system is a Motorola Solutions Radio System. The Committee looked at a Harris solution, we also looked at the Motorola solution. What we determined is, the city went with the Harris system because the system that we currently have is what they call a legacy system. It’s old, it’s not ratable anymore and its not compatible with anything Harris has. We would have to upgrade the entire radio system all at once. Harris does not share any of the infrastructure that Motorola does and Motorola does not share any that Harris does with the old systems. This would make the transition to a new system very difficult if we chose Harris. The other option we looked at was Motorola Solutions because our current system is a Motorola product. Motorola has offered a phase and approach to replace the infrastructure. The phase and approach is called a Smart-X system. Smart-X allows the city to replace the network infrastructure in one year and phase and channel replacement over multiple years as well as phasing in new radios over multiple years. The proposal you are looking at that we are talking about this evening, that the Committee decided on, was to replace the City’s network infrastructure by going with Motorola. Just this network infrastructure issue would alleviate 90-percent of all the issues related to the obsolescence of our network. If we replace the network infrastructure with this proposal, what would end up happening is there would be system controllers, site controllers, prime site controllers that would still have to remain operational until the entire system was transitioned over to what we call P-25 system. These site controllers are at all the sites within the City. They help direct traffic from the radio system. The next phase would be to replace three channels a year over three years, with a fourth channel being placed in the final year. That would be the second, third or fourth phase. The system will slowly defer to a P-25 open standards system. The FCC has mandated that any new radio systems be what they call P-25 and have open standards. Basically, the infrastructures are not open standards, but any subscribing unit, meaning a radio, portable or mobile radio whether it’s a Harris mobile radio or whether it’s a Motorola mobile radio or portable radio, it can work on this system. A GE radio can work on this system. At Tate radio can work on this system . They are all built today with P-25 open standards infrastructure. Replace public safety and nonpublic safety mobiles and portables over multiple years and eventually replace all by the end of the conversion. Multi-year approach, Phase I: Replace radio system network equipment. Basically replacing network radio network infrastructure, replacing the radio consult computers at Police and Fire. The proposal came in at $1.5 million. Phase II is a projection. Phase III, IV and V are projections that we haven’t actually have not sat down and negotiated anything with Motorola to give us actual pricing for the next phases. These are estimates off what we are looking at today. Phase II: would replace three radio channels within the system, some of the mobile radios, portable radios. Phase III – replace three radio channels, again mobile and portables. Phase IV: Replace four radio channels. All the pricing is there. All are estimates at this point in time as to what this would cost us. Phase V would be to continue replacing some of the mobile and portable radios, apply system upgrades to the system Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 4 infrastructure just as over-the-air programming and a few other niceties that can be placed into the system at the end to make it function better for everybody. The service ability and life cycle. All mobile and portable radios once they are purchased, they will last as long as the radio will last until you cannot buy any parts for it anymore. Motorola and most manufacturers today; if you buy a mobile or portable radio you have five years from the last ship date, not from the ship date that we receive it, from the last date they stop manufacturing, five years that they guarantee they will be able to repair those radios. On system infrastructure they now guarantee seven years from the last ship date of the infrastructure. If something gets phased out you have seven years to come up with a plan to start moving over to something new or just upgrade the system and get rid of the parts and pieces that are necessary. We anticipate the life cycle of our system, network infrastructure at this point in time is 10 years. With system upgrades throughout the years this will probably last us many more years past that 10-year period. Again, it’s going to cost money to have the upgrades done to the system. Software and hardware upgrades; the system will be IP based. It’s all computerized. It uses intimate protocol. Every two, three or five years Motorola offers different types of system upgrades for software and hardware to basically resolve any issues that you have with your system with life cycle coming to an end. There are also other infrastructure items that are not related directly to the system, but at the sites. Both Police and Fire and also still operate VHF bay stations for interoperability We have interoperability with everybody in this state at this point, as long as they have our radio channel programmed into the system. If somebody from Merrimack or Hudson comes to Nashua and turns to the Nashua channel whether it be on the Fire side or Police side, they will have direct communications to us over the radio system. That was a gateway that was provided by the State on the Police side this year. It was installed this past year. UPN systems at the sites. We have UPN systems at all five sites within the city. The Police Department is the prime site and has a very large UPS system at that site. Console furniture at Police and Fire, eventually that is going to have to be replaced. We also have on top of UPS’, we have all our big pieces of equipment such as our radio channels, our GPS systems, they all operate off 48 Volt batteries. My understanding, I’m not too familiar with batteries, but we have 48 batteries at each site. These batteries are not little batteries, they are probably about 100 pounds a piece. They are huge batteries and they are stacked in a rack. The charging units for those will have to be replaced. The doors on the sites will have to replaced because they rust out, air conditioning units. There are many, many different things that still will have to replaced over the years. Just to bring your attention to the fact that the system is 12-years old, the buildings are 12- years old, the towers are 12-years old. Sadly it’s old and does have to be replaced. Basically there is a financial plan that was generated by the Mayor, CFO. The Committee also had reviewed the financial plan. At this point, I’m going to stop it there, see if there are any questions on what I presented to you and will leave the financial part for the end. President McCarthy Any questions from the Board. Alderman Deane There is nobody here for testimony, so are you going to fore taking President McCarthy I want to finish up the presentation. If you’d rather we can hold the questions until the budget meeting? Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 5 Alderman Deane This is fine by me. From the numbers that I saw, around $10 million it’s going to cost. This basically is just for the network infrastructure itself. That does not include any radios? Bill Mansfield That includes everything. All the radios as well. Alderman Deane My question is, how many people have radios that don’t need them? Bill Mansfield As a matter of fact, that is part of what the Committee has done. We have made inventory of all the radios. We are looking at all the departments, including Fire, Police, DPW, looking at the number of radios. I believe Fire has already had the initial pass-through and lowered their amount of radios by 25. Police department are lowering theirs by 30 plus. We have to work out exactly who is going to get what and how we are going to do that. The numbers are going to be reduced dramatically. President McCarthy If I could just comment on that. The issue actually turns out to be that in most departments there are people who don’t have them who should and as a result we have more radios than we ought to because there are pools of radios that people just take them in and out of. So one of the things that is going to be done is to assign radios to individual members of the special response for example, so they each have one and then there will not be these shared pools of radios that are kept for those issues. Alderman Deane Will there be a list of radios and who is assigned radios? President McCarthy There is one of those now. Alderman Deane Where do you find that? Right in my folder. Bill Mansfield I cannot tell you every specific person that will have that list, but I do have a list of everybody within the city and every cash of radios that is in the city. Alderman Deane I have just seen situations where there would be a bunch of city employees and they all have a radio. Where there is a crew of them working together then one radio would be sufficient. Also the radios that are installed in city-owned vehicles, if they have a portable radio why do they need a radio installed in a car? Was that looked at as well? Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 6 Bill Mansfield Yes, we are looking at all that, especially on the DPW side with Andy Patrician on the Committee, and he has been very helpful in locating these radios. We are going to be determining with the Director and the Mayor to find out who exactly is going to need a radio and why somebody has a radio that has it, and make a determination whether or not they need it or not. Alderman Deane Which director? Bill Mansfield Director of Public Works. Alderman Deane When was the Committee formed? Bill Mansfield Approximately a year ago. Alderman Deane Mr. Patrician was asked to serve a year ago on this Committee from landfill? Bill Mansfield No, he was a recent addition to the Committee when he changed positions within DPW. Alderman Deane Who were the original cast of participants that you had? Bill Mansfield I believe he was the only addition. President McCarthy I have a question as to who was on it from Public Works initially. Bill Mansfield There was nobody, I believe, from Public Works at the time. Mayor Lozeau If I could Mr. President and Alderman Deane, I think it might be worthwhile for Mr. Mansfield to speak to this. When you asked the question about radios and whether that is all in. On the financial screen, the first year does not have radios in that amount, so we still have the opportunity. So, what we did, if you could go back to the financial screen … Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 7 Alderman Deane That was my question, on the networking infrastructure, so it does not include the radios? Bill Mansfield The first phase does not include any radios. Mayor Lozeau This legislation is not about that piece. The phases that are up there, what we are really showing you is worst case scenario of Phase II, III, IV and V because we have not finished doing the analysis on the radios. We are not sure if we might be able to get grants for some of this work. If you recall this year we had a grant for 65 radios. We also just had a new one that is coming for an additional 14. We brought some fire radios out of the capital improvement money that we had set aside this year, so I am hopeful that those numbers will be able to come down. What I thought was important for everybody to see tonight was the whole picture because we have been talking about communications knowing that we had troubles when we showed you the bond sheet back in May. We told you that communications was part of the other that we had determined because we were concerned about that. The Committee is going to continue to work. But that first phase is exactly what is up there and does not include the radios that leads to tonight’s legislation. Alderman Deane The P-25 open standard system that we spoke of, that is not just germane to Motorola products? Bill Mansfield That is for everything. It’s Harris, that’s everybody. Alderman Deane Depending on what is decided upon, but we are not being forced to use Motorola product. Now we have some opportunities to get away from Motorola if we choose to do so? President McCarthy That standard was developed from a proposal that Harris’ predecessor had out when we did the initial radio system. That was then Erickson who had a system called APCO 25, which ultimately became the P-25 standard which looks nothing like their original standard, but it did come from elsewhere in the industry and Motorola embraced it as they went along. You also should note that all the radios that we brought recently are dual mode Motorola proprietary and P-25 so that when we ultimately switch the system over those radios will still be software upgrade and will then operate with the new system. Alderman Deane Has the Committee looked at other types of radios that would be available outside of Motorola to date? Have they looked at anything, or is it premature to ask that question? Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 8 Bill Mansfield I was involved on the Committee with the State at looking at a couple of radios. Because of the grant the 65 radios that we received, there was a Committee formed in the state to basically test certain radios that were out there. They tested Harris, Motorola, Pennwood, Realm. I believe there was a fifth vendor out there. Hands down Motorola came out on top with all the people that tested them. Because I’m involved with radios, I’m involved with Motorola and I did not bother to test them. I was on the Committee and sat on the Committee. There were Chiefs of Police throughout the state that took these products, put them on the street with officers and the officers then wrote evaluations on all the radios and they were brought back to the Committee. Overwhelmingly, Motorola stood at the top of everything on the system. We can give you a printout of that if you like of the pros and cons of that. There have been other radios that have been tested. There are other radios as well such as Tate. There is another one called Thales. There is a variety of them out there that we will look at, not now, but once we start moving in that direction. President McCarthy I think it’s probably premature to evaluate what the other ones are, but we have had this discussion in the Committee numerous times. I think for the fire portables and most of the police portables we are probably going to wind up continuing to buy high end radios because of the ruggedness or the Public Works portables and the school department and the other uses, I think by the time we go to buy those, there will be significantly cheaper alternatives available from some of the other companies. Alderman Deane I guess this is called city-wide communications and the bond amount is being paid by everybody. There is no other money budgeted in anybody’s account to deal with any of this, is there? Bill Mansfield No there is not. Alderman Deane The useful life of the upgrade is five years? Bill Mansfield I will defer to Alderman McCarthy on that. We had a discussion about that and the main thing we were looking at was the actual servers themselves. The servers, for the most part, even here in this building, are swapped out every five years. That is why, initially it was proposed for five years. Although, after further discussions and looking at possible upgrades, software, and things like that, we feel that it is highly likely that this will be a minimum of 10-years for a lifespan on the network itself. President McCarthy It is very hard to predict some of it, because basically this is computer equipment which obsoletes in three to five years. Alderman Deane It’s obsolete in three to five days when you leave the store with it. Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 9 President McCarthy This is a little better than that. Some of the rack equipment and that sort of stuff has much more of a life lifespan than that; power supplies typically. I would expect it would be longer than five, but we will be replacing components of it in five. Mayor Lozeau In the first phase? President McCarthy The computer equipment, the life cycle is pretty quick. Alderman Deane I’m just looking at your list. When you go to Phase II, III and IV, what is the vulnerability on the current equipment that is being used now by Police and Fire specifically, with the failure rate, with the lack of parts? With the inventory that we have, what is the overall condition between the Fire Department and the Police Department? What is there? Bill Mansfield Radios themselves? Alderman Deane Yes, radios themselves. When you look at Phase II and Phase III … Bill Mansfield Some mobile radios being replaced? The issue would end up being because you are doing a phase- in approach you are going to be operating a dual system. You’re going to be operating a P-25 system and you are going to be operating a non P-25 system. Alderman Deane With some of the radios? If you brought new ones and continued to use the existing ones? Bill Mansfield All the radios that I have purchased over the last four or five years are all upgradeable or already have the chip in there to be P-25. But on the Fire side there is still, I would say, approximately 150 portable radios alone that are not P-25 compatible. On the Police side there is approximately 160 radios that are not P-25 compatible. On the mobiles, all the mobiles are not P-25 compatible. The only thing we have purchased over the years has been portables. Alderman Deane If you dealt with the Police and Fire in the beginning and then took the balance of the inventory and utilized it throughout the city, would there be any gain through purchase from whoever for a volume on that? Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 10 President McCarthy You have to remember that the non public safety radios at this point are mostly newer than the public safety ones. Alderman Deane You mean Public Works has newer radios than the Police Department? President McCarthy Yes. There is good reason for that. We did not pay for most of that. Bill Mansfield What we basically did was rebanded our radio system a few years ago, it was part of the deal with Sprint to take our radio frequencies and basically they are a frequency swap. They had to replace all our nonpublic safety radios because they were not compatible with the new radio frequencies that we had. The burden was on them to spend I think the whole project cost, almost $1 million and for them to replace all our radio, plus pay for the switching of everything within the system over to the new radio frequencies. So, Public Works portable radios are newer than most of the Fire and Police radios. Alderman Deane The fire trucks have repeaters on them, right? Bill Mansfield There are all but 13 that have repeaters on them. Alderman Deane What is the status with the repeater with the new radios, is there any? Bill Mansfield Those repeaters will all have to be replaced. Alderman Deane What is the cost of that? Bill Mansfield They are about $13,000 apiece. Mayor Lozeau Mr. President, if I could. I think adding to this discussion Alderman Deane, one of the things that I ask to do, you are asking the question about Motorola. What I have said is I feel like we are in this corner that we just have no options. I’m going to ask Mr. Mansfield to talk to you about why Phase I is what it is and why that is a priority here and the savings that we have been able to accomplish if we can get Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 11 this done relatively soon with Motorola. Also, we are in this strange place right now where technology may be able to replace how we have been doing our radio communications. We had discussions with companies that are on the edge of developing a technology that is a small little cube that goes on buildings that takes care of public safety and doesn’t drop ability in all of this stuff but it’s not ready yet. It may not be ready for three years or five years. Even then it might not be tested. We cannot wait for that even though it might be more cost effective because we are having failures in the system. When the Committee was put together, not only were they supposed to do the inventory pieces and determine better protocols on who has and who doesn’t, who has the expensive and not expensive radios, who needs mobile, and also looking at if somebody has a cell phone do they need a radio and if so, why because of who they are talking to. All those things are happening. If it was five years from now and we were looking at this, I think it would be a very different discussion than it is now. We also have the grant that we are involved with, with Manchester with the State that plays a role in some of this, particularly in, I think it’s Phase III. So if you could just explain some of that I think it would be helpful for people to understand that. We looked at re-engineering some of the equipment, reverse engineering some of the equipment if that would help us with power supplies. We really looked at, what else can we do that is not this and how much time will it buy us? Bill Mansfield We met with, I’ve tried especially with the power supplies is the biggest thing. I have tried across the country to locate somebody that could fix power supplies for the zone control. Mayor Lozeau Because they have gone down. Bill Mansfield Because they have gone down. Luckily, I have been able to beg, borrow and steal power supplies from people who have moved to the Smart-X system and got rid of that infrastructure. They have been kind enough to give me one here or one there. I have to say the last one I received was two months ago, I plugged it into the system and it shut down our system. Now I’m running into an issue where I don’t know what the quality of a power supply, what quality are the parts that I’m receiving from other people. They tell me they work. The only way I can tell if it’s really going to work is by plugging it in. That day it cracks everything. We have looked at different companies across the country. We even have a company in town that we looked at. They took the power supply apart. They gave us a proposal of what it would cost to repair the power supply, and coming back and saying, we are not going to guarantee its going to work. Alderman Deane What a gig that is. Bill Mansfield That’s across the country, because these power supplies were actually manufactured in the UK and they were military spec power supplies. That particular company is not allowed to release any documents relating to the power supply so nobody knows how to fix them. There are boards in there that are no longer made. I think there is 48 batteries on every one of those boards, they are D-size batteries that are soldered in. The batteries leaked. They melt wires inside. There are multitude of things that have gone wrong with these power supplies. We have looked at many options. We spent probably two years trying to figure out what we were going to do with these power supplies. Like I said, I have been lucky to find people who have been able to give me power supplies when they have Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 12 moved over to Smart-X system. There is no easy solution. There is no real low cost solution to getting to the point where we are today, where we have to replace this network infrastructure. Even though we replace the computers, we replace pieces of parts of the network infrastructure, there would still be one major item that is still obsolete in the system until you have converted over to the new system, which is the Prime Site Controllers. Again, I have been able to get pieces and parts for those. They don’t break down, knock on wood, although they can. Alderman Deane How much are they? Bill Mansfield You cannot buy them. You cannot get them repaired. There is nothing you can do with them other than to go to other agencies and say, can you give me this board, can you give me that board. It’s a board that just slides and has to be programmed to operate on the system. We have looked at many of these different options for the past couple of years because nobody wants to spend this type of money on a radio system. I would say on the Phase II, III and IV, we are going to be coming before the Finance Committee in the very near future with a proposal for a consultant, that we have looked at to hire to assist Manchester and Nashua with building a system, building for our system, their system so they are compatible with each other. Also, part of the study is to determine what else we can do. What can we do to save money? Are there other solutions that are out there, that are in II, III and IV, that Manchester may be able pick up something, we may be able to pick up something. We are looking at grants to do this. As a matter of fact, Homeland Security has paid for the grant that has funded this consultant to come in and do the work. We are looking at many different options. This first phase is the biggest part of it because that it is our most important need at this point in time. The other parts and pieces we can hold off a little bit longer. The only piece that is still hanging out there are the prime site controller and the site controls. Although, I’m a little more comfortable with the those than what I am with the zone controller or our servers. Mayor Lozeau Or your power supply. Bill Mansfield Well, that’s part of the zone control, the other power supplies that are in there. Alderman Deane When we get these and if this happens and these components obviously, is this going to be the same nightmare that we are dealing with now? It seems like when you talk about this company, this UK company that made these power supplies for the military and they cannot release documents associated with repairing them, we are not going to be purchasing anything that is going to be next to impossible to deal with a number of years down the road, are we? These components are going to be user-friendly? Bill Mansfield A lot more user-friendly. Back when we brought our initial radio system, everything was proprietary. Harris had everything proprietary. Motorola had everything proprietary. Today, it’s not proprietary. It’s open infrastructure. Everything is IP based. It’s not like when you could basically go into a store and buy the pieces and parts off the shelf, a lot of them. The issue with doing that is software that Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 13 goes into them. If you buy this type of system, as years go on you are going to have to keep maintaining it with software upgrades and hardware upgrades as you go forward. The old system, you couldn’t do that. You didn’t have the capability to do that. You were stuck with that system and that was it. Alderman Deane One thing that I’m happy to hear is that we are purging through a list of radios and people that don’t need them, along with the fact the amount of cellular telephones that we pay for along with the radios that we have, along with the parts that we have to buy, it seems like it has spiraled out of control. It will be interesting to see and I would like to see your then and your now once you have gone through and figured out what the need is, what the plan is and as Alderman McCarthy eluded to the radio pool, I believe that is what he called it. I would also like to know, will additional or extra radios be purchased if something goes out. You repair a lot of radios now yourself, right? Bill Mansfield We do tuning of radios, we do not actually get into the boards and start soldering things. All of that is shipped out to a third party vendor. We don’t ship them to Motorola. We ship them to a third party vendor because Motorola won’t even touch them. It is less than half the price to go to the third party to get them fixed. Alderman Deane Than to have Motorola do it? Bill Mansfield Than to have Motorola do it. Correct. We have been doing that for three or four years now. We don’t send anything to Motorola anymore. If it is still under warranty we will send it to Motorola. Alderman Deane This network infrastructure, as the Mayor stated earlier, we are not going to be saddled with the fact that we have to deal solely with Motorola on everything, we have other avenues? I believe Alderman McCarthy stated, but I may be wrong, but we are looking at the heavier duty Motorola type radios for those, i.e., Firemen going into buildings and things are getting banged and slammed or the Police are dropping them, but anything else with light duty use like Code Enforcement or the Building Inspectors or the Health Department or whomever else would have a lighter duty radio that is not a rugged piece of equipment because it’s not needed and the cost of that would probably be a lot less. Bill Mansfield It could be considerably less. Alderman Deane It would not have to be a Motorola, it could be a Harris radio instead? Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 14 Bill Mansfield It could be a Harris radio. The only issue you would have with that is again, software or even software programming. Now you are dealing with multiple service shops and multiple places that you have send things out to get the items repaired. Alderman Deane You are more a supporter of all in on one type? Bill Mansfield I am more of a supporter of all in, one type. One piece of software for programming and you have one person to go to to have your items repaired. Alderman Deane Do the software upgrade charges include per device on the system or is it all-inclusive? Bill Mansfield All inclusive. Alderman Deane What is the normal cost to that? Bill Mansfield For a mobile or portable radio, the software upgrades for that are $300 every three years. It is a three-year stint. If your talking about a system infrastructure a software upgrade could be, we are looking at just software, is right around $75,000 for a software upgrade. If you are looking at a software hardware upgrade you are looking at $300,000 to $400,000 going down the road, but that is not something you would do on a yearly basis because of the cost of it. Alderman Deane Is there a yearly fee? Bill Mansfield There is no yearly user fee. With the system, what we have rolled into to get the $1.55 million, we also twisted some arms and got two year’s warranty on the network infrastructure for the system. It will be under warranty for two years without us having to pay any fee initially on that. Right now we pay $23,000 a year on maintenance fee for somebody to be on-call for when myself or Brian Sherman who works with me, if we are not around or available, for them to come in and work on the system. That also provides us with preventive maintenance, retuning of everything every year, twice a year to make sure it moves forward. That is the only maintenance cost we pay on the system is $23,000. When you go into the newer system, there isn’t much you can do with it today. With the newer system, every year Motorola has a release. Right now we are 7-13. It is called a 7-13 system. Next year is 7-14. Just because it’s next year does not mean you have to go with that software upgrade. You can skip a year and go to 7-50. Again, that is a different price. Or you can go to 7-60. That 13, Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 15 14, 15, 16 is all related to the year that it is released. It is always released at the end of the year. There will be additional maintenance cost on the system. Alderman Deane So, the $23,000 that we pay Motorola to take care of issues when there is no availability of you or Mr. Sherman, what does that equate to for hours of service delivered to the radio system? Bill Mansfield Six thousand dollars is attributed to somebody being on call and helping us out when we run into issues. The remaining part of that is for them to come in and do preventive maintenance two times a year. I believe it is two men for a total of six days. Alderman Deane Twice a year or is that in total? So it’s 12 days, two men? Bill Mansfield I think it actually works out to be somewhere around eight to nine days, right in-between there for two men for a full year. Mayor Lozeau Seventeen thousand dollars? Bill Mansfield Yes. President McCarthy I want to go back to the radios and selections. Once the P-25 standard evolves and we start to get more vendors, I actually believe that the price of the generic portables will get down to an area where we would not, as a rule, repair them because they are highly integrated and I think that price will ultimately get down to where, the one’s Public Works has for example, you buy them, you use them for three years. When they break you replace them because it would be in the hundreds of dollars not the thousands. Alderman Deane They will be like television sets. President McCarthy Yes. I have a hand-held receiver and the price of those is down to under $400 and that is not significantly different electronics than what it takes to interface with the radio system. There are a lot of other dynamics to the cost that keep it up in the thousands which has to do with the number of units that the engineering amortized over, which is fairly small in public safety. If P-25 comes along and starts getting used in other places there will be a lot more of those hand-helds being built and that will drive the long-term cost down. Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 16 Alderman Deane What is the timeline on Phase I? Bill Mansfield If we purchase it before the end of the month it would probably be installed before April. I shouldn’t say probably, it will almost definitely be installed before April. Mayor Lozeau Just so we are all clear, Mr. President, if I could. For Phase I the purchase is for Motorola but it is not proprietary. Bill Mansfield The infrastructure is proprietary. Mayor Lozeau I do not think that was clear. Bill Mansfield The infrastructure is proprietary. Mayor Lozeau Phase I, we are buying it from Motorola at a reduced price, two year’s worth of warranty and it remains proprietary. When we get into those phases, it does not? Bill Mansfield It remains proprietary to the point where they have to come in to service it and that is where you would get your upgrades from. The hardware that they are supplying you, is hardware that you can actually buy off the street. The issue is trying to program that hardware. It is the software that is the proprietary part, it is not the hardware, but again it is programming that software to work on that device. President McCarthy That is not unique to Motorola. If you were to buy a Harris system it would be the same thing. The only thing that is standardized is the over-the-air protocol between the portables and the base system. The base systems are all going to be single proprietary solutions to the vendors. Bill Mansfield Correct. Mayor Lozeau I just wanted to make sure that we all understood that. It is very hard to wrap your brain around. As you know, I have been making you crazy since I got here trying to understand all this over the years. Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 17 This year it is just ramped up because of the problems you are having, which is why Phase I is that critical math. I do still feel like we have no options. When you were saying it will be an IP and so it’s not proprietary, I just wanted to make sure I understood where that applied to. Alderman Deane This has already gone out to bid, there is a proposal, it’s ready to submit to the Finance Committee? Bill Mansfield It has not really gone out to bid. It was through a WSCA contract, Western States Coalition, I’m not exactly what it stands for. The State of New Hampshire is involved in the WSCA contract. Motorola came to us with a WSCA contract price plus, because it’s the end of the year, they came in with an incentive price for us to do this. When they did that we had spoken with the Mayor and the Committee. We figured this looks pretty good. Could we get some more out of them, so we squeezed them some more and got some more out of them and that is where we are at today. Alderman Deane What was the total cost avoidance? Bill Mansfield The initial cost was $2.2 million. Alderman Deane So we have a cost avoidance of about $600,000? Mayor Lozeau Plus the two year warranty. Bill Mansfield Yes. Alderman Deane What would it normally come with, a one year warranty? Bill Mansfield Yes. Alderman Deane We get an added year? Bill Mansfield The value of that is about $75,000. Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 18 Alderman Deane Since I have been here, Mr. Mansfield has come here every year giving the state of his communication device condition, so this is not a shocker to me. President McCarthy I think one of the other things the Committee has been working on is trying to figure out what the life cycle is. We would like to get an individual inventory of all the pieces of equipment and their life cycles so that we understand, after these phases are done, what the replacement schedule is for components in the future so we don’t get to these surprises. Alderman Deane We are not going continue to bond stuff and make people pay for it out in the future because they are the ones taking advantage of it and we may not be here? President McCarthy The option is, we can do it either way. I think whether you bond it or pay for it cash, it would be nice to understand when the right time is to do these things so we can plan for them. Mayor Lozeau Budget accordingly so that you are not necessarily looking at numbers this high. Alderman Deane Mayor, this is a mere pittance compared to the problems we have in the City. Look at the school district. Not one nickel has been put away for depreciation of those two new high schools that are now 10-years old. That’s going to be the next issue. Mayor Lozeau We have this team together, Alderman Deane, so the only point I was trying to make is what Alderman McCarthy is saying. If we are going to replace this infrastructure and do these sorts of things then we can plan out what our expectations are and money for operations. As you know, this year in the budget we put in a bigger than usual amount in capital improvements to be able to be ready for some of the radios and other things that we were worried about would fail while this plan was being developed. The point is, this is our best plan so far. Then we are going to work on mitigating Phase II as much as we can and how that impacts Phase III, what the consultant might be doing with the Manchester/Nashua component that Mr. Mansfield was talking about and how do we do that. I just wanted you to see that is where it is and how do we plan going forward. That is part of this work. Alderman Deane The capital money will still be used primarily for replacement of the mobile and portable radios? Nothing else? Mayor Lozeau Or any equipment that is outside of Phase I that needs to be used. Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 19 President McCarthy Ultimately, that is a policy decision for this Board. Do we want to put enough in the budget to cover the depreciation cost of the system without bonding and that’s a discussion we should have. We ought to understand what those costs are first; things like the infrastructure that we built, the tower at Shakespeare, the tower in the landfill that we are on that may or may not always be there. Those are long lifetime items but they will wear out eventually. The tower is going is going to have to replaced some day. It would be good to understand when and how much and what that corresponds to in yearly depreciation of that asset. Alderman Deane I would like to see the radio inventory city-wide. I definitely would like to see that then. What is currently existing and what is currently proposed because it seemed like it got out of control. It’s not like we shouldn’t have extra radios, I think we should. You don’t want Firemen going into burning buildings and basements with no communication because the thing is out having a battery replaced in it and we don’t have any extra radios. I would like to see that list, along with what we do not need to fund for cellular telephones because people have these radios. Has that been looked at? Mayor Lozeau We have gone down significantly in the amount of cell phones that that we use, but the question the Committee is going to be looking at is, if somebody has a cell phone, who else do they have to communicate with? Do they still need a radio or are they communicating only with people that have cell phones? We used to have those Nextel. As we have been looking at that we have been making changes, but we are going to consider that. Let’s take Andy Patrician for example, he is the office manager for the Division, he has a cell phone, he has a radio. Does he need both? He is communicating with truck drivers and some of the other staff who don’t have cell phones, so he is probably going to need a radio. Do we have to have mobile devices in the truck if the truck driver has a hand-held does he need a mobile device? One of those might be able to be eliminated. That is the analysis that we are trying to get through right now. I hope that we will be able to eliminate some of those. I also think technology is going to change at some point, where in some places, you might be able to eliminate radios altogether and just use cell phones. That is what we are trying to look at too. Alderman Deane If you do not have a city issued cell phone and you have your own cell phone and the city contributes to your plan or whatever the monthly allowance is, is it possible to get cell phone records of those phones that are privately owned in which the city pays a contribution towards in which the phone is used for both personal use and for city business? Mayor Lozeau You can get a record of it as it relates to city business potentially, but otherwise no. What we have been doing is the regular cell phone that is not a Smart cell phone gets a $17 a month allowance, and the Smart Phone gets a $50 a month allowance. We are working really hard to get toward allowance only and to eliminate as many city phones as possible. Alderman Deane Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you Mayor. Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 20 Alderman Cookson That was a very thorough set of questions. I do not have many left fortunately. President McCarthy If I could. One further piece of that where technology may help us over the coming years. The big difference between the proposed APCO-25 standard and P-25 is that P-25 is basically the voice over IP standard in the radios which is the same thing that Comcast and Vonage use to do telephone service and basically the same thing that all cell providers are using for the back end. It appears there may be some emergent technologies that allow gateways between the cell phone network and our radio network which is what would enable somebody to just using a cell phone with an APP be able to participate in the radio system without having the radio. That does not exist yet, but five years from now when we get to the end of that upgraded, it may well. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on some of these technologies and see what happens. It may make it easier for us to deal with. I think we will always be saddled with having to buy reasonably good radios for public safety. But there are a lot of opportunities elsewhere to use much cheaper devices than a Motorola portable. Alderman Cookson What does the next solution look like? Thank you for that. President McCarthy There is one more. There is a proposal to do what is called the Nationwide First Responder LTE Network, which is a government funded cell infrastructure that would give us connectivity over what is the same technology as phones. If we are gung-ho about it, in five years we will all be using that. If you look at the way the government is funding it, in 15-years we might be using it. That is another emergent technology, but not one we can make decisions on today. Alderman Cookson Let me see if I can quickly go through this now. Many of the questions have been answered. One additional question that I did have was that, even though Alderman McCarthy has a wealth of technical knowledge, one of the assets that I did not see engaged in at team was that of IT. Mayor Lozeau IT has been at the table from day one. Alderman Cookson That would have been who? Mayor Lozeau It would start as Mr. Barker and now it’s Mr. Miseirvitch. Alderman Cookson Thank you for finding that. Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 21 Mayor Lozeau I was looking at that, wondering if you missed anyone. Alderman Cookson I did know about the meetings. I did not know the committee was established. I was just making an observation. Mayor Lozeau I thought schools was on the table too? Alderman Cookson I think it’s difficult. This is one of the things that the Mayor and I have disagreed on and it is different in this situation because this is a public hearing, but the idea that we are making a decision, and even though as Alderman Deane had mentioned, we have seen this type of presentation for several years before Budget, so many of us are familiar with it. This is a decision that we are making this evening and this is the first time that we are seeing this presentation. Again, the difference of opinion that we have had in the past is that I would have liked to have a presentation ahead of time so that we could fully understand it rather than just trying to hear it for the first time in an evening and then make a decision that same evening. I think, Mayor, that you are of the agreement that, if we are going to make a decision, that typically a presentation would have been delivered ahead of time. Again, this is a little bit different situation because it’s a public hearing and I understand that. I still would have liked to have seen the content of this maybe a little bit sooner than this evening. President McCarthy I think we would done that because the Committee was proceeding at a particular pace and actually went back to look at some of that. The reason it got accelerated was when Motorola put half-a-million dollars on the table. Mayor Lozeau That was very motivating. Alderman Cookson The other question I have, you had mentioned the switching of the spectrum and DPW receiving a $1 million worth of equipment based on that change. That radio, that portable is not at an adequate level or appropriate rigidness for police for fire, is that correct? Bill Mansfield Let me just clarify the $1 million. The $1 million was for the entire project. It was not just for the radios. It was for reprogramming the system, reprogramming the sites. They were here for months working on this. The radios they were pretty much upgraded to are analog only radios. They are not digital radios. Especially on the fire side, they are not intrinsically safe. They are not ruggedized for dropping in water or getting hosed down. They are not transferable. Alderman Cookson Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 22 This multi-year approach that is displayed on the screen here, five phases, what is the worst case scenario to implement these five phases? It would be less than five years or would it take up to five years? Bill Mansfield The biggest priority right now is Phase I. Phase II, III, IV and V, that could all be done at once. Those numbers would come way down. I’m not going to tell you how way down it could be, but we did drop considerably from what we came with just this. There are key times in the year where you want to buy products, usually the end of the year. The end of the fiscal year for Motorola is this month. That is why there was a lot of arm twisting and we could get a lot more out of them than we normally do. If you compacted this altogether, a budgetary figure that I know of is $7.5 million. That’s a budget figure. That’s list price, that is with no WSCA discount, that is with no incentive. That number could come way down. If the Board eventually decided in the future that they wanted to do all those all at once, there could be a large cost savings to that. Mayor Lozeau Mr. President if I could, we have asked Mr. Mansfield on the committee to take a look at getting a price for the phases all being done together and what that might look like, so when we come back for those other phases you’ll know. The advantage to this too, is that now you are getting the whole presentation, you know that something is coming that will be helpful. President McCarthy There is a complication here, if I remember correctly, the transceivers at the sites ultimately become end-of-life in 2017, so along about that time we want to be replacing them. In order to replace the primary site controllers, we need to replace that infrastructure at the same time. We were trying to work out a phasing to get to there by the time the equipment reaches end-of-life. The reason it was broken into phases is we can move public safety to P-25 and move some of the channels to give them the capacity over a year or two, and then in the last piece do the last four channels and bring the nonpublic safety radios up to speed at the same time, at about the time that all of it reaches end-of- life. Alderman Cookson This Resolution that we are considering this evening is for $1.6. It is based on the first phase only and that is a five-year bond. Can I defer to the Mayor for a response? Mayor Lozeau Alderman Cookson, I shook my head because legislation came in at five-year bond. But speaking with Mr. Mansfield, the CFO and the Treasurer, they looked into it and they are recommending that it be amended to a 10-year bond. They have come up with that the cycle would be 10-years. Alderman Cookson Mr. Griffin is going to explain that aspect of it. We have not gotten to that piece of the presentation. Mayor Lozeau We thought we would do that at the Budget Meeting or now, whichever the Committee prefers. Spec. Bd. of Aldermen - 12/13/12 Page 23 Alderman Cookson I have one last question. There was acronym that I was not familiar with, it was the UPS. Bill Mansfield Uninterruptable Power Supply. Alderman Cookson Thank you. Which has been interrupted. Those were my questions. Alderman Deane I want to talk about spending. Is it moved from a 5-year to a 10-year bond, so we can bond something else to reduce the proposed $334,000 yearly payment over five years. Mayor Lozeau No. There is not anything else that we have on the sheet. But when we talk about that we will bring up the CFO and the Treasurer. We will show you the numbers and we will talk about it. President McCarthy If we are done with the presentation on this phase … If there are other questions let’s take those, but I would like to finish the pro forma part of the public hearing and move to the Budget meeting. Any other questions. In that case, I will call for testimony from the public on R-12-81 authorizing the Mayor and City Treasurer to issue bonds not to exceed the amount of $1,600,000 for the first phase of the radio communications upgrade. Is there anyone wishing to speak in favor. Testimony in Favor - None Testimony in Opposition – None. President McCarthy I will ask one more time for any testimony on R-12-81. There being none, I will call the public hearing closed. ADJOURNMENT MOTION BY ALDERMAN DEANE THAT THE DECEMBER 13, 2012 SPECIAL MEETING OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN BE ADJOURNED MOTION CARRIED The meeting was declared adjourned at 8:15 p.m. Attest: Patricia Piecuch, Deputy City Clerk Radio System Upgrade December 13, 2012 Š Purchased in 2000 Š Moved disparate radio systems into one system Š Increased radio coverage throughout the City Š Increased the amount of radio channels Š Provided entities without radio communication with radio communications Š Provided interoperability with every City agency. Š 800 MHz (building penetration) Š Trunked (shared channels) Š Digital/Analog Mixed Mode (audio quality) Š 3 Sites (98% in building) Š 10 Channel (increased capacity) Š Simulcast (redundancy and better coverage) Š 1500 mobile and portable radios operating on system (interoperability) Š Motorola Proprietary System Š Radio System has never been upgraded Š Network Infrastructure is operating on 1990’s technology Š Radio Network Infrastructure is Non- Repairable Š Board of Alderman - Brian McCarthy Š Finance - John Griffin Š Emergency Management – Justin Kates Š GIS – Angelo Marino Š DPW – Andy Patrician Š Fire – Asst Chief Steven Galipeau Š Police – Captain Jeffrey Bukunt Š Communications Division Š Reviewed ƒ Infrastructure Lifecycles ƒ Mobile and Portable Lifecycles ƒ Non System related Lifecycles Š Weighed options for system replacement Š Reviewed Equipment Inventories Š Determined the immediate needs à Replace the Network Infrastructure Š Review multi-year plan for replacement Š Stay with Current System and hope the infrastructure doesn’t fail. Š Replace Entire System. Š Upgrade the entire Radio System all at once. Š Upgrade the radio system with a phased in approach over multiple years. Š If the City was to move forward with a Harris system it would be required to upgrade the entire radio system all at once. Š Harris does not share any of the infrastructure that the Motorola “Legacy” system currently has. This would make the transition to a new system very difficult. Š Motorola offers a phased in approach to replace our infrastructure called SMART X Š SMARTX allows the City to replace the network infrastructure one year and ƒ phase in channel replacement over multiple years, ƒ phase in radio replacement over multiple years. Š Replace the City’s Network Infrastructure ƒ This will alleviate 90% of the issues related to obsolescence of our network. ƒ Replace 3 Channels a year, over three years with the forth channel being replaced in the final year. ƒ System will slowly be converted to a P25 “open standards” system. ƒ Replace public safety and non public safety Mobiles and Portables over multiple years and eventually replace all by the end of the conversion. Š Phase 1 - Replace Radio System Network Equipment and Replace Radio Console Computer at Police and Fire. ($1.55M) Š Phase 2 - Replace 3 Radio Channels, some mobile and portable radios. ($2 .11M) Š Phase 3 - Replace 3 Radio Channels, some mobile and portable radios ($2.17M) Š Phase 4 - Replace 4 Radio Channels, some mobile and portable radios ($2.17M) Š Phase 5 - Replace some mobile and portable radios, System Upgrades, Software Upgrades ($1.80M) Š 5 years from last ship date for mobile and portable radios Š 7 Years from last ship date on Infrastructure Š Anticipated Lifecycle System of 10 Years Š The New System will be IP Based ƒ Every 2, 3, or 5 years the System will need either hardware or software upgrades. Š VHF Base Stations (Fire) Š UPS Systems Sites, Police and Fire Š Console Furniture Police and Fire Š 48 Volt Batteries at Sites Š 48 Volt Charging Units Š Replace Doors at Sites Š Replace Air Conditioning Units Š Bond Amounts Š Multi Year Operating Budget