By Patrick O’Donnell
The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND — Cleveland is scrapping its failing radio system and replacing it with a new one that will cost at least $30 million.
The city plans to seek proposals next week to build a new system that connects all the safety forces - police, firefighters and rescue squads - as well as the city’s snowplows, garbage trucks and Water Department employees.
The old Motorola system, which was installed in the mid-1990s, has crashed three times since December, leaving police in a virtual blackout.
According to the police union, during one crash, officers were called back to their stations over private cell phones.
They were then dispatched to serious calls from there, with a second police car sent along for backup.
“The only way they could have gotten additional backup would be using their cell phones and calling 9-1-1,” said union President Steve Loomis. “For a city of this size to have the radio system go down for an hour is terrifying.”
All told, including maintenance and upgrades, the city has spent about $43 million on the current radio system. Though some city departments used it earlier, police started using it in the spring of 1997.
The new system — with about 6,000 radios — is expected to cost between $30 million and $60 million.
But city officials wouldn’t explain the huge price range or say how they will pay for it.
Safety Director Martin Flask and assistant Norberto Colon, who heads the city’s Office of Homeland Security, Grants and Technology, declined to give details, other than saying the new system will be phased in over three to five years. City spokeswoman Andrea Taylor, fielding questions for Mayor Frank Jackson, would say only that grants, money from the federal government and bonds likely would be used.
The existing Motorola SmartZone system offered an advantage over the city’s earlier system in allowing departments to all use the same system. But according to Colon, Motorola no longer manufactures equipment for the system and it is incompatible with others.
So, as part of a maintenance agreement, Motorola buys used and discarded gear from other customers and cannibalizes the parts to service Cleveland’s. A Motorola spokesman declined to comment on the system, referring all questions back to the city.
Because more radios are not available, Loomis said his officers do not have their own personal radios and have to turn them in at the end of a shift so the next shift can use them. That means off-duty officers have to call 9-1-1 like everyone else if they see a crime and respond.
And Loomis said the radios’ batteries can’t hold a charge for an officer’s entire shift. Officers must return to the station to swap batteries for charged ones mid-shift.
Even with those issues, Motorola is the likely winner in the replacement. Nationwide, public safety systems have begun to use a standard known as APCO Project 25 that allows different cities, counties and agencies to all patch into a common system in serious emergencies. Many federal grants are based on improving interoperability between safety communications systems.
The state’s Multi-Agency Radio Communications System is working toward using that standard, as is an ongoing upgrade of Cuyahoga County’s system and the one in Lake County.
Though the city expects to seek proposals from several vendors, experts note that most Project 25 gear is made by Motorola anyway, so bids would just be from different vendors selling the same product.
Colon, who researched communications systems across the country and state, said that will change over time as more vendors build gear to those standards. He said he expects multiple companies to be selling compatible parts and gear within a few years so the city will have choices.
Flask and Colon said the old system was a major upgrade over the city’s previous system and that it did a good job. They stressed that all technology must be upgraded over time, just like a home computer, and that this one lived its useful life.
“It served us well for 15 or 16 years,” Flask said.
Copyright 2009 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.