Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
A new radio system is expected to improve communications for Sweet Home police officers after the Motorola company completes designs and builds a new 100-foot tower.
The Sweet Home City Council authorized a purchase agreement with Motorola to design and build a new radio system during its regular meeting on Jan. 24.
Last summer, the city of Sweet Home received a Homeland Security grant to purchase a new radio tower and base units to provide needed system security, Police Chief Bob Burford said. The grant would also take a step toward a federal mandate to switch to a digital radio system, allowing agencies to communicate with each other if necessary.
The original grant did not provide funding to complete the system beyond the tower and base radio units, Burford said, but Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District’s switch to Linn County Sheriff’s Office for dispatch services in October meant it was no longer necessary to buy additional base equipment.
“We were able to seek and receive approval to reconfigure the grant to purchase police mobile and portable radios,” Burford said.
The city also will construct a new building to house equipment at the tower site.
Motorola’s work will cost the city $174,051 in grant funds. The city has $1,353 in grant funds available for the building with an additional $15,000 in the city budget.
The new tower will be built at the city’s current tower site, off Turbyne Road, Burford said.
Initially, the city had planned to build the new tower on Strawberry Hill.
The new system will improve mobile-to-mobile communication, Burford said. Right now, an officer on one end of town can talk to dispatch, but an officer on the other end of town may not hear the first officer. Dispatchers must relay information in those situations.
Once the new tower is in place, officers will easily be able to talk to each other anywhere in the city, Burford said. The new base radios and mobile radios will meet the digital standard that will be required for emergency radio systems at the end of the decade. That upgrade costs less than $15,000 in grant funds, included in the Motorola package.
Digital radios will allow agencies to split frequencies in half, and radios will have 125-channel capability, Burford said. The department will program them with every frequency it may need.
Security at the tower site will improve too, Burford said. He declined to reveal the details of security improvements. The site is fenced and locked with some security features, Burford said. “I feel good about it, confident.”
The city’s weak link in security has been the use of a phone line to the radio tower, and this project eliminates that, Burford said.
“We’re putting a battery backup that can run the system two or three days,” Burford said. A transfer switch will allow the city to take a generator to the site and plug it in, if necessary.