Pecos Valley Regional Communications Center Board

Pecos Valley Regional Communications Center Board of Directors Minutes Held in the Chaves County Administration Building Wednesday, December 06, 2017 at 1:30 p.m. The meeting convened at 1335 hrs. with Britt Snyder presiding, Devin Graham, Stan Riggs and Mike McClain as Proxy for Monte Baker being present. Dennis Kintigh, Phil Smith and Joe Neeb being absent. Others attending were: Karen Sanders, James Salas, Ashley Armijo, Alison Herring, Jason Sweatfield, Tracy Laney, Donald Mathiason, Wynn Brannin, Juan Macias, Gabriel Holguin, Bill Williams, Bill Keck, Collins Key, Ron Smith, Daniel Ornelas, Matt Stuart, and Shane Baker. A motion to approve the agenda was made by Devin Graham and seconded by Stan Riggs. A voice vote was unanimous and the motion passed with Dennis Kintigh, Phil Smith and Joe Neeb being absent. A motion to approve the minutes from 11.01.2017 as amended was made by Stan Riggs and seconded by Devin Graham. A voice vote was unanimous and the motion passed with Dennis Kintigh, Phil Smith and Joe Neeb being absent. Action Items: Nominations for Chairman of the Board for 2018- Nomination by Stan Riggs for Brit Snyder to continue as Chairman of the board. A voice vote was unanimous and the motion passed with Dennis Kintigh, Phil Smith and Joe Neeb being absent. Non Action Items: Staffing Report- Tracy Laney stated that the three applicants have been selected and have been forwarded to H.R. at the City. I am still checking with the NMLEA because one of them is a Mexican Citizen with a work permit. This could affect NCIC access. There is also a fourth prospective employee on deck that has completed the background process. Digital Radio Project- Tracy Laney stated that the RFD worked on digital for two weeks, and then had some problems at a structure fire scene, with the noise reduction on the digital channel in the radios. The S.O. was switched to Six Mile and have been for the last month since the 7th or 8th of November. The Radios are labeled Comanche and need to stay on that channel. Collins increased the offset and reduced the digital level 6 to 8 DB to reduce the dispatch level. We just got the updated quote from Ashley for the 10 cables and licensing for the Zetron direct connection to the digital Kenwood Radios. Tracy Laney stated that Chaves County has only had 4 or 5 repeated locations to cover the entire county and on January 1, 2013 we had to comply with the FCC Narrowbanding Mandate. Which split the frequencies in half from 25 MHZ to 12.5 MHZ spacing, this caused significant issues noticed by all of our Emergency Responder Agencies. We first looked at a Mototurbo, but it was not a mission critical system. Then we looked at Nexedge, Motorola and the Kenwood/E.F. Johnson offerings. By this time Wynn Brannin had come out with a directive that we could not use the Nexedge system and that we had to implement a P25 system if we were to use DHSEM funding. We ultimately chose the VHF system from Kenwood/E.F. Johnson for Interoperability with adjoining counties. We have received $780,000 and $300,000 funding from DHSEM over the last two years, but received no funding this year and when Karen Sanders checked, she was told that our project did not meet the criteria for an interoperable system. This confused us because it had met the criteria for the last two years. Wynn Brannin from DHSEM is here to discuss DHSEM funding for the project. He stated that the Priorities for the funding were for special teams and homeland security with terrorism nexus. Communications projects were below that and only two were funded this year, one for a tower in Lincoln county, and one to update two emergency communications trailers in the Albuquerque area that are available for the entire state. They received 14 million dollars in requests and only had 3.5 million dollars to allocate. Announcement: Next Meeting 1-03-2017 at 1:30 pm. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned by Brit Snyder at 14:25.